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Hopkins Elementary students prepare to work in their own garden
Caitlin Fertal
CFertal@News-Herald.com
Students at Hopkins Elementary School in Mentor spent Wednesday learning about gardening.
The school has its own garden that’s coming along nicely after grant funds and PTA donations allowed it to be created a year ago.
In the garden, students have grown a variety of vegetables that have been served in the school’s cafeteria, said Principal Lawrence Luciano.
The school is currently preparing to plant a pumpkin patch and a separate garden that will be used to naturally filter water as it runs through the plants.
The school is also starting a composting station.
Right now, students are growing plants in their classrooms before they transplant them to the garden.
Older students at the school visited Lake Metroparks Farmpark Wednesday morning to participate in hands-on workshops that covered a range of gardening topics, like composting, how to read a seed packet and other tips.
Kindergarten through third-grade students attended an assembly in the afternoon where they heard from Farmpark Interpretation and Education Manager Christina Bellas.
She spoke to students about the relationship between plants and people and how they each benefit each other. Then she showed the kids how to plan out garden space by using colorful paper diagrams on the wall.
The garden learning ties in to the new science standards for the Common Core Curriculum, Luciano said.
“If you take something and you put it out of the sun and then you graph and compare how something with sunlight grows versus something that doesn’t get sunlight, or you withhold water from it; so in science classes they’ll do some of that, it really fits into the curriculum pretty well,” he said.
CFertal@News-Herald.com
Students at Hopkins Elementary School in Mentor spent Wednesday learning about gardening.
The school has its own garden that’s coming along nicely after grant funds and PTA donations allowed it to be created a year ago.
In the garden, students have grown a variety of vegetables that have been served in the school’s cafeteria, said Principal Lawrence Luciano.
The school is currently preparing to plant a pumpkin patch and a separate garden that will be used to naturally filter water as it runs through the plants.
The school is also starting a composting station.
Right now, students are growing plants in their classrooms before they transplant them to the garden.
Older students at the school visited Lake Metroparks Farmpark Wednesday morning to participate in hands-on workshops that covered a range of gardening topics, like composting, how to read a seed packet and other tips.
Kindergarten through third-grade students attended an assembly in the afternoon where they heard from Farmpark Interpretation and Education Manager Christina Bellas.
She spoke to students about the relationship between plants and people and how they each benefit each other. Then she showed the kids how to plan out garden space by using colorful paper diagrams on the wall.
The garden learning ties in to the new science standards for the Common Core Curriculum, Luciano said.
“If you take something and you put it out of the sun and then you graph and compare how something with sunlight grows versus something that doesn’t get sunlight, or you withhold water from it; so in science classes they’ll do some of that, it really fits into the curriculum pretty well,” he said.
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11:09 PM
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