Gardening builds children’s awareness of the importance of the environment in everyday life. It also teaches them to care for the plants and value the food that they have.

Every year, our Kindergarten students are given the opportunity to plant vegetables such as sweet caisim, spinach, chili, lettuce, tomato and others. These may seem easy to plant but growing them is a bigger challenge. Nevertheless, it has helped students to build responsibility as well as developed their knowledge through exploring, discovering, identifying, and solving problems that arise.

This year, we have introduced a simpler method of growing plants. Hydroponics uses mineral nutrient solution in a water solvent and it uses Rockwool instead of soil as a growing medium. The students were curious about how the plant would grow if there is no soil and what the plant would look like. The students patiently waited and observed the plants. After several weeks, they were able to harvest the vegetables. They were amazed by how fast the plants grew, how healthy the plants were and how easy it was to harvest them. Sharing is a good deed that they have learned through this activity. They went to the canteen to donate some vegetables as they harvested more than they were able to eat. They also prepared sandwiches with the lettuce for the teachers.

At the end, for the students, the most fun of all was getting to enjoy the food that they planted and prepared by themselves!

May the harvest be good again next time!

by:

Michelle Abellera