A Patch from Scratch
Over the past month the Pre-prep children have been involved in establishing a new vegetable garden, after reading the book “A Patch from Scratch” by Megan Forward.
A Patch from Scratch is a beautifully illustrated picture book about one family’s desire to “live more like people on a farm”.
The narrator is a little boy who explains the process he goes through with his own family (mum, dad and brother), to turn their suburban backyard into a vibrant source of food.
They build a chicken coop, buy chicks, and with some help from everyone, they plant lots of fruits and vegetables.
The boys make lots of decisions and get involved with the building of;
- the chicken coop;
- the frames for the vegies; and
- the garden beds.
They work hard constructing and navigating through the trials of pests and then waiting for things to germinate and grow.
Great lessons of determination, patience, grit and delayed gratification.
Eventually they have success. A feeling of fulfillment and accomplishment.
So much success in fact, that they invite their friends and neighbours over to share their bounty with.
The journey begins!
The class was very motivated by the story and after a lot of discussion, they decided to start their own vegie patch from scratch.
Bright kids garden was in need of a make over so what better place to start our veggie patch.
The children then visited the garden several times over the next few days to remove the old plants and weeds and prepare the soil for new plants.
Ms Caitlyn kindly donated some seedlings she had been growing at home.
The children drew up a plan of where each type of vegetable was going to be planted just like the brothers did in the story.
The children selected a seedling and gave it a new home in the veggie patch, making sure to give it a good water and place mulch carefully around it to keep it safe.
During the planning phase the children identified a potential risk to their seedlings….birds!
As we have lots of birds that like to visit the trees and the children felt that they would eat all of their vegetables.
So, it was decided that the garden would need a scarecrow to protect it.
Scary Maclary joins the class.
The children sourced a variety of recycled items from around the centre and researched how to make a scarecrow taking ideas from the ABC’s Dirt Girl World program.
With a little help from me, the children;
- Stuffed plastic bottles into netting bags;
- Tied it together onto the stick frame to make the scarecrows body;
- Its head was made from a larger milk bottle and plastic lolly container.
- The scarecrow was then dressed in donated clothes.
All our scarecrow needed now was a name.
The class came up with 3 names:
- Bottle Head;
- Scary man; and
- Kid Crow.
And yep! Scary Man won the vote!
The name then morphed into ‘Scary Maclary’ after reading the story “Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy” and the class discovering that scary and hairy rhymed.
And that was how Scary Maclary joined the class.
Scary Maclary was positioned in the middle of the vegie patch. The children gave him a Bright kids hat to make sure he would be protected by the sun.
Every other day the children visited the garden to water the plants and observe the progress of the seedlings.
After about 2 week they were able to see a visual change in the height of the seedlings and were very excited that were growing.
This experience will continue on throughout the year and we look forward to being able to post updates as we harvest vegetables from this patch made from scratch.
That’s all from Ms Patti and the Sea Turtles.
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