Photo by Lilly Willis
Worms! They’re wiggly, they have no eyes and they help a garden grow. That’s just the start of what local kindergarteners learned during their hands-on Summer Cub Club experience on Tuesday, July 11, at Henry Highland Garnet Elementary School.
Summer School at Garnet runs four days a week for three weeks, offering school readiness experiences for Pre-K, Kindergarten and First Graders.
This year’s curriculum, Children Study our World, has a theme of Vegetables and Gardening that proved irresistible to the Chestertown Garden Club. They offered to lead three 40-minute garden activities for 13 Kindergartners each Tuesday.
At each session two garden club members work with Kindergarten teacher Taylor Johnson and instructional aide Lilly Willis.
On the first Tuesday, Garden Club members Penny Block and Susan Flanigan facilitated “Hello, Earthworms!”, introducing the youngsters to live earthworms and how they contribute to garden soil.
“We read aloud from a book about earthworms,” said
Flanigan, “then the kids looked for worms in a tray of soil to observe their behavior”. After the classroom activity, everyone went outside to the school’s raised bed garden where they helped release the worms into the beds and watch them burrow into the soil, then used a rain wand to water their already planted vegetables.
“To illustrate a fun fact,” added Block, “we had the students measure out 10 feet, the length of the longest recorded earthworm!”
Lessons over, each student took home a coloring book about soils and a special snack: an edible “earthworms in a cup” concocted from chocolate pudding, crushed cookie crumbs and gummy worms.
Week two, Tuesday, Jul 19, will feature “Magical Herbs”. Kids will hear about different kinds of herbs, learn how to transplant them, plant some herb seeds, and take home a plant.
Week three, Tuesday, July 26, “Grow your own Pizza”, is sure to be a favorite. The kids will harvest tomatoes, oregano, and basil for pizza toppings, make tortilla mini-pizzas to eat, and bring home a small bag of cherry tomatoes and a recipe card to make more mini-pizzas at home with an adult helper.
Summer school Cub Club is organized by Community Coordinator, Flo Terrill, and Judy Center Coordinator, Beth DeShepper.
It is sponsored by the Kent County Judy Center Partnership, an organization that helps link families with young children to community services and partners with them to increase school readiness.
The Chestertown Garden Club has an ongoing interest in youth gardening and promotion of attractive surroundings in the community. They took the lead in realizing the Good Seeds Garden, a native landscape that now surrounds Garnet School with natural beauty and a teaching environment.
This much anticipated annual Spring event offers an abundance of local, non-invasive plants for sale, along with “Everything Garden” tools and containers and a boutique of “Don’t Think Twice” treasures. The baked goods table will be filled with home made pies and cookies. Preordered box lunches can be picked up between 11:30-1 and a limited number will be available for purchase at May Mart. This year’s raffle will offer a prize everyone would want: a $100 gift certificate to the Chestertown business of the winner’s choice.
