Author: innerlandscapedesign

February 17, 2012

Out of Our Minds-Learning to be Creative

Our latest installation at the Franklin/Adelante Friendship Garden has been a wonderful fusion of teachers, students, community groups, and the shiny found objects that can be reused as art.  We have been wanting to collaborate with our art teacher, Shannon Jaffe, so we jumped at the opportunity when the Incredible Children’s Art Network (ICAN) put out a proposal for ‘out of the box’ projects that could be used in a film that students from Santa Barbara Middle School were making. The 3 minute clip will be used in a film at the U.C.S.B. lecture given by Sir Ken Robinson, “Out of Our Minds-Learning to be Creative.”  Sir Ken Robinson is an internationally renowned speaker on education, innovation, and creativity, and his lecture is at U.C.S.B. on February 21, and is sponsored by the Orfalea Foundation.

November 2, 2011

A Perch of One’s Own

Thanks to a generous donation from Carpeteria in Goleta, the kids now have carpet squares to take to find their own special spot in the garden to work. In this writing exercise, we were imagining what it would be like to be a scarecrow.  I think the scarecrow at Franklin/Adelante looks pretty happy, replete with recycled skateboard wheels for hair, from Art from Scrap.


 

August 2, 2011

The Etiquette of Eating

The teachers for our English Language Development at Adelante Charter wanted to use contextual learning techniques, so they chose the garden to be the focus of their summer session. We harvested, fertilized, weeded, and the older kids wrote a garden guide of our experiences.  The last day was a cooking class – tomato herb spread, with 4 different nuts from California.  Though everyone was anxious to try it right out of the bowl, we made a beautiful display, accompanied with our Jamaica tea, and the kids practiced serving others and asking “Would you like some tea?”  Through the tortuous wait, I reminded the kids that their caregivers probably served them first everyday throughout their whole lives.  What a gift that is!

June 13, 2011

The most important thing on the farm…

We ended off our incredible garden year at Adelante Charter with a field trip to Fairview Farms in Goleta.  Fairview’s wonderful staff stumped us all straight away with the question – What is the most important thing on the farm?  The soil! As we meandered through orchards, chicken hideaways, bee territories, and goat stalls, we could feel underfoot that this was true. The carrot taste test proved it! The soil, the food, the environment is alive and well at the farm.

Thank you Fairview!

February 21, 2011

Super Spuds

Potatoes are charmers. Think of Mr. Potato Head, Potato Salad on the 4th of July, or playing ‘Hot Potato’ with adjectives and adverbs as we did at Franklin School…

They must have charmed the conquistadors in Peru, and one wonders how much gold was brought back in relation to potatoes. The fact that they do have eyes and did cause a million people to immigrate to North America just add to their allure.

Though harvesting potatoes is a bit onerous, just ask some kids to help and tell them they are looking for buried treasure — they won’t be disappointed!

October 5, 2010

Cooking goes Solar at Franklin

After sharing a zucchini, tomato, and fig stew cooked in a standard solar oven, Stephanie Bagish’s 5th grade class at Franklin worked in teams to make their own solar cookers out of recycled pizza boxes.

This project lasted a full hour to construct, discuss its scientific properties, and how it can be a part of sustainable living around the world.

Here is an additional link:  http://www.hometrainingtools.com/build-a-solar-oven-project/a/1237/

October 5, 2010

The Earth is an Apple

A shocker for kids!
This lesson demonstrates the amount of fertile soil left on planet earth, and hits standards in both math and science.  Start with a whole apple for the earth, and cut off 3/4 for the amount covered by water.  Of the 1/4 land remaining, cut away 1/2 which represents the ice caps and high mountains, and have kids calculate the remaining fraction (1/8).  Of that 1/8 of land, cut 3/4 away, so 3/32 is the amount of land that covered by deserts, wetlands, and our cities. Have the children calculate the remaining piece (1/32) which represents the amount of healthy soil on earth that is used to produce food, fiber, and lumber for the entire population.
One fifth grader asked, “Did there used to be more soil?”
I asked him what he thought, and he said “Yes.”
I asked him if he thought the amount of fertile soil in the world would continue to decline, and he said, “Yes.”
“But what can we do about it?” I asked.
“Make more soil!!” They all shouted. So we went out to look for worms for our new compost bin…..

An additional link for this lesson.  http://www.msue.msu.edu/objects/content_revision/download.cfm/item_id.278476/workspace_id.-30/This%20Land%20-%20Slice%20of%20Planet%20Earth.pdf/