Term 1 – Curiosity and Enthusiasm

Term 1 at Paengaroa School our tamariki got stuck into the garden with curiosity and enthusiasm. We kicked off by exploring what had grown over summer, harvesting tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, peaches, apples and digging up potatoes to take home. We stocked up our Pātaka Kai and talked about how our garden can feed our community.

An important topic we covered this term was learning about pollination. We used our zucchini plants as an example to show the difference between male and female flowers; and how pollinators like bees help move pollen from one to the other to help the plant grow fruit. Tamariki explored the garden to spot other flowering plants and watched closely for insect visitors. These hands-on moments made a tricky topic easy to understand. We then made tasty zucchini fritters, connecting the science to something delicious we could eat – straight from our own garden.

We also explored the life of seeds and the parts of a seed. We used the sunflower seed as an example, feeling the hard seed coat, peeling it and finding the little seed inside, we then ate them.  We walked around the garden spotting plants like calendula and lettuce going to seed. We mixed up our own seed-raising mix from pumice sand, compost and coconut coir and got stuck into planning and planting our winter garden. This was a great time to talk about the importance of crop rotation and regeneration of soil.

As the seasons shifted, we welcomed Autumn with leaf art. We also had some fluffy visitors; chickens that Tess had brought to the garden from home, as oxalis control. The students had a great time feeding the chickens oxalis, and we talked about how animals and gardens are connected. 

We enjoyed collecting seeds from lettuce, cornflowers, sunflowers, beans, tomatoes, our glass gem corn and marrows.

We picked our pumpkins and learned how to tell when they’re ready to pick by checking if the closest tendril had dried off. We pulled out summer crops, collected feijoas, planted peas, and planted a green crop bed of mustard after the potatoes (which helps to cleanse the soil of disease). We even made wildflower seed bombs while learning how seeds travel in nature.

It’s been a fun, hands-on term full of growing, harvesting, seed saving, and learning how our garden connects to the cycles of nature.