Over the last couple of months the preschool children at Bradley House have been working together to take care of our vegetables in our planting area. We started out my sowing seeds back in June, with the hope to grow some vegetables for Judith to cook. In July we observed our seeds germinating and when we could see the shoots we planted them into our planter.
Over the summer the children took turns to water the plants and watch them getting bigger and the flowers beginning to grow. We spoke about the differences in the leaves, flowers as well as the different vegetables and fruits we could see. The children began to observe as the flowers turned into vegetables and watched as the plants grew.
Towards the middle of September it was time to harvest our vegetables. We were so excited to see how big our vegetables had grown and the children enjoyed picking a variety of courgettes, carrots, chillies and leaks. However we had to leave the tomatoes because they are still green and growing! The children handed their freshly picked vegetables to Judith for her to use in our lunch. All our children were excited when Judith told the children their lunch contained the ingredients they had grown.
Throughout the entire learning experience children have been able to build on their understanding of growth and what conditions plants need to grow. The children have built on their knowledge of where vegetables come from and continued developing their social skills as they took turns and listened to each other’s ideas. Our preschool children have been introduced to new words such as “stem”, “root” and “petal” as we looked at the different parts of the vegetables throughout the Summer season! We are now looking at taking on the challenge to grow some more yummy root vegetables throughout the Autumn in the hope they will grow as big as our courgettes
