Kindergartners Coddle Cukes

Understanding Grows in Urban Classroom

Although hydroponic growing may seem to require technical savvy appropriate for older students, Chuck Lafferty's kindergarten students in Philadelphia, PA, were nonplused. "I like to use life science as a theme for all we do," says Chuck. "Since our inner city school has little room for an outdoor garden, I purchased a Hydrofarm hydroponics unit two years ago so we could raise food plants, through their life cycles, in the classroom."

From arrival of the hydroponics unit to final harvest, says Chuck, his first group of soilless farmers were thoroughly engaged in maintaining the operation. Together they assembled the unit and then chose vegetables and flowers to try growing. "We had to begin by discussing where our food come from, and then tried to imagine what different food plants might look like," says Chuck. From November through March, the kindergarten scientists maintained nutrients and pH, observed, measured, kept journals, and even played the pollinators in their soilless garden. The cucumber plants were perhaps the biggest success, explains Chuck. When the flowers emerged, he had the kids buzz about dabbing the blossoms with an eye toward spreading pollen. The upshot? A classroom party to celebrate (and eat) their 12-inch-long cukes.

"Earlier that fall, we had harvested seeds from giant sunflowers we grew outdoors," says Chuck. The class took a stab at sowing the seeds in the hydroponics setup and the room eventually sported an enormous green sunflower stalk, but never yielded a flower. "Next year we might just try a dwarf variety," he says wryly.

When Chuck received a Youth Garden Grant from the National Gardening Association, his students were able to apply much of what they'd learned from their hydroponics project to a new context. "The kids already knew how to care for plants and understood much more than they had about how plants work," explains Chuck. Applying their understanding of plant life cycles, Chuck and his students created a little business venture from their harvest: The Kindergarten Seed Company. The kids gathered selected garden seeds and counted out batches of five to put in re-sealable plastic bags. Each student then created a label for a particular seed packet. "The plant labels were actually good assessment tools," says Chuck. "Students' drawings became much more detailed — from lollipop figures to details of roots and leaves — once they'd seen plant life cycles up close in the classroom and garden." These gains, it seems, may also have been reflected in standardized science test scores where, Chuck reports, students who went through these growing experiences soared. "I think that caring for and watching their plants grow has also had a wonderful calming effect on the students and has increased their respect for nature and for each other."

 

 

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