JULY 3RD, 2011
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For our second year, Growing Chefs has partnered with the Garden School in Jackson Heights, Queens to run a math and science program using our Garden Botany and Kitchen Chemistry curriculum. Using the school garden Growing Chefs installed last year as our outdoor classroom, students explore the biology, botany and ecology of food plants, then take the knowledge back into the science classroom for lessons on chemistry and nutrition. Instructor Kallie Weinkle reports back after a week in the classroom:
Monday’s lesson consisted of the “intro to the garden” intro to photosynthesis, tomato pruning, weeding, tasting garden veggies and then making pesto. We tasted all the different lettuces, peas, herbs and talked about all of their differences, what part of the plant they all came from and did some weeding and general garden maintenance.
The next day in the afternoon we focused more on what soil is, did an experiment which was taking soil samples from our veggie garden and also from the ground and shaking them up to see how much sand/silt/clay they contained. [The] kids loved the worms and enjoy checking in on them every day.
Wednesday [we made] volcanoes…while talking about baking soda and how it makes bread rise.
Thursday…we discussed out water cycles…after drawing out a water cycle we went outside and made our clouds using both water and rubbing alcohol (alcohol works better as the molecules aren’t held together as tightly so they make better clouds) [We did an experiment w]ith the cloud-making [in a bottle]…I took it a step further and talked about why the alcohol works better than the water, and we demonstrated the molecules attraction to each other by pouring both liquids on the sidewalk and observing how thin each liquid spreads and how fast they both take to evaporate.
Friday was taste day. [We did a taste test of] sweet, salty, sour, bitter tastes, plus tasting while smelling vanilla. It was very interesting even for myself to do and I definitely see the kids learning and excited for each day.