Bike Smoothies

 How can you use energy to make energy?  Ride a bike and make a smoothie at the same time!  On Monday the garden classes had a special treat, thanks to Mr. Abraham's second grade class.  Mr. Abraham's class won the "Golden Sneaker Contest" last month, so they received a bike blender party.  Rosie Mesterhazy from Safe Routes to School brought the bike blender and offered it for our use for the day.  For the smoothies, we used berries fresh and frozen, bananas, juice, and for some, soy milk or yogurt.  While the kids took turns on the bike blender, we talked bike safety, smoothie ingredients, and energy use.

All the kids gave the experience a big thumbs up!  Special thanks to Elsie Lee for her help.  The next "walk and roll to school day" will be October 3rd--keep that date in mind, meanwhile, bike safely!

Fabulous Veggie Fried Rice Year Two

 The Spring Harvest 2012 offering was a big success!  Last Friday, the Garden Program again provided a veggie stir fry "snack" to all the students made from garden produce.  A true "field to plate" experience, Ms. Kendricks's class harvested about 20 bags of dino kale, broccoli, swiss chard, onions, spring garlic and Russian kale from the garden boxes on Wednesday.

 Then a fabulous crew of parents washed, chopped, stir fried, and cooked rice (and helped serve and clean up!) on Friday morning under my direction.  Thanks also to Kim Cook for soliciting help, Holly Jimenez for wok wonders, and Elsie Lee for lending her rice cookers.

 The stir fried veggies with rice and eggs (a little soy sauce and sesame oil were the only seasonings).

 Survey says thumbs up!  We made four large pans, and every last rice kernel was eaten--kids lined up and came back for more.  One child suggested we do this every month, and another asked if I was going to cook again on Monday.  I knew it was a big success when a child I was serving asked, "Could I have more vegetables, please?" 

 The event was "waste free"--both the paper trays and the wooden chopsticks were compostable, so nothing went to the landfill.

We'll keep cooking and tasting vegetables in different ways in this next month in garden classes.  RHS community, do you have a favorite recipe for preparing garden vegetables?  If so, please share it with me.

Waste Stream Diversion at RHS

Where does it go? Any adult who visits the lunchroom at RHS will likely hear this question at least once. After two years of school wide effort, the children know their trash no longer automatically goes to the landfill. This past week I visited several classrooms on Monday and Tuesday to do a review lesson of why and how we sort our lunch waste.

Every morning the students at Redwood Heights gather outside to say together the school maxim: “We take care of our Self, We take care of Others, We take care of our School.” I asked the students when they sort their trash, which of the school rules are they following? Some said it was to help others, and some said it was to help our school. Still others said when we sort the trash we’re following all three.

We talked about what happens when we don’t sort our trash, and where the trash goes—we discussed the animals that have to leave their homes to make room for the landfill, or even get killed when their homes are destroyed. Or the animals in the ocean who suffer when plastic garbage looks to them like food. As adults we know more reasons to be concerned about filling up our landfills (the build up of methane gases contributing to global warming, issues of social justice and environmental racism as industrialized countries ship our garbage to developing countries overseas or poor communities within our country, and the huge economic costs of managing and disposing of waste), but actually the suffering of innocent animals is reason enough. The children mentioned several positive reasons to sort trash, such as that some of what would go in a landfill can be reused or made into cool stuff, and that food waste makes great compost that feeds the plants. Diverting waste from the landfill also saves our district money, so there are numerous reasons to sort our trash.

At Redwood Heights School students are learning how to reduce the amount of trash that goes to the landfill, and others are taking note. Last year, we won a special award for our trash sorting efforts from the Oakland School district, the “Green Glove Award,” which is displayed on the wall next to the front of the office. We were also recognized by Stopwaste.org as a "Bay Friendly" School Garden in part for our trash reducing program.

This week we practiced sorting trash or pictures of trash, and I was impressed by how many students remembered and understood the rules of sorting. The children are motivated to help the animals and proud of their efforts so far to divert waste from the landfills. Some students proudly displayed their lunch pails and items made from recycled materials. You can help your child at home with waste sorting by including them in your waste sorting process, or if it’s appropriate, giving them the job of taking out the compost, trash and recycling. Purchasing reusable and/or recycled products whenever possible also reinforces the 4Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rot) that the students are practicing at school. You can find more ideas of what to do at www.stopwaste.org.

Welcome Back to School

A giant pumpkin on the terrace, hollyhocks and sunflowers growing on the roof, calico popcorn and heirloom beans--these are not the only new things growing in the garden.

This year I'll be using Portable C for some of my lessons--so we won't have to crowd into the hallway to see a video about composting, or take over the staff room to learn the life cycle of a brassica. I'm looking forward to using microscopes to show students the compost makers in the soil (it's not just worms!), more lessons with magnifying lenses, weights measures, and even lessons on energy use, as well as nutrition, gardening, and math and science lessons that extend the classroom learning.

Class sizes are bigger this year; if you are available to help during garden time, let your child's teacher know, or let me know. The teachers have the schedule of when garden time will be for each class, and I will post it here soon.

Whole Wheat from the Ground Up

Last fall, as an extension of the first grade Plants and Animals FOSS kit (FOSS is the hands on science curriculum), Ms. Fisher's first grade class planted wheat during garden time. At first we measured the wheat plants' growth, but after a while gave up as it got taller than the students, taller than our yard sticks.

The first seeds we planted, blue beard wheat seeds grown in a community garden in Martinez, which I had gotten from a seed saving exchange at the Ecology Center in Berkeley, did not sprout well. So on December 1st we replanted red winter wheat seeds from the wheatberries grown at Full Belly Farm in the Capay Valley. I bought those at the farmers' market in Berkeley.

The students noticed new kinds of insects attracted to the wheat (soldier beetles, which eat aphids), and differences between the seed heads. They learned that wheat seeds go through stages before they can be harvested--first the "milk" stage, where each seed oozes a white liquid when squeezed, then the "dough" stage. Finally, the seed is dry and hard, ready to be harvested, threshed, and ground into flour.

We harvested, threshed, and ground the wheat the last week of school, and Ms. Fisher made whole wheat banana muffins with her class on the last day, to rave reviews from the children. I saved some of the wheat berries from Ms. Fisher's wheat, so the first grades this year will plant these seeds (before December this time, since it takes at least six months to reach maturity). This is how our ancestors propagated and developed different varieties over time. If we kept saving and planting the wheat seeds we grew every year, eventually we'd develop our own heirloom variety of wheat specially adapted to our soil and climate--we could call it the "Redwood Heights School" variety of wheat.

Carrots from the Rooftop

It was a very exciting day last May when Ms. Weissman's class finally got to harvest their carrots. These had been in the ground (well, in barrels of dirt on the roof) for over 6 months. I tried to remind them of when we had planted them from seed, but that was all forgotten in the crunch of the moment. There's nothing sweeter than a fresh carrot! Later, they harvested the onions and garlic. There were enough for each child to take one home, and they were beaming with pride.

Fabulous Spring Veggie Fried Rice

Last April, after cooking stir frys and making salads with all the classes, I once again had too many vegetables ready in the garden to use during garden class. They were starting to go to seed. Luckily, Mary Dalsin and Kim Cole came to the rescue, and cooked up several huge bowls of greens and spring onions from the garden to make a fabulous veggie fried rice dish for the children to choose at lunch. The recipe was simple, based on my ten minute stir fry (see previous post), with egg, served over rice.


The children gave it a thumbs up, and many wanted seconds. Part of the "Waste Free Lunch Week," we served it in paper containers (compostable), with a plastic utensil to be reused (we collected and washed them). I didn't notice any uneaten stir fry in the compost bin, which contrasts with the amount of food from the school lunch the students usually throw out. I think it just proves again that if the vegetables are fresh, and cooked fresh, children will ask for them by name. And really, who can blame them?