It’s time to Tuck in the Garden. As Daylight Savings ends and temperatures plummet, the days of growing delicious food at the Truro Community Children’s Garden is ending for the season. We’ll still be able to snitch kale and mint leaves for smoothie snacks, but our big job right now is preparing the garden beds […]
What motivated you to begin the Children’s Garden? The Truro Children’s Community Garden really grew out of the Ag Fair. We had many children’s events at the fair to involve children in the festivities: Pie Eating Contest, crafts related to agriculture, old fashioned games like potato sack races. The activities brought the community together. When […]
The Core gets a great workout when you crab walk. Activating all those muscles and joints also stimulates filters and organizing parts of the brain. So, when the kids start to get really excited about Halloween, grab a few pumpkins and challenge them to a crab walk race. Along with the positive brain organizing effects, […]
Some folks LOVE GOOEY and others HATE GOOEY. I have a colleague who confessed that she wretches just looking at a worm. And yet the children at our community garden love worms. They search for them, hold them, stroke them and carry them around. A little girl placed several on her arm and tilted her […]
Each year at the Truro Community Children’s Garden, an animal is selected as the featured “pet” for the year. The nascent gardeners learn about them, draw pictures of them and feature them in garden displays as the season draws to a close. Last year the children selected chickens. They learned about the obvious benefit of […]
When discussing our collective experiences in growing a Children’s Garden at the Truro Central School, a second grader summed it up by stating, “I like making food.” The students participated in the process of planting seeds, amending and tending to the soil, weeding and best of all, harvesting delicious food. Along the way, they acquired […]
As the school year ends, parents and teachers are always asking me how to help their children with handwriting. Especially as the “Summer Activities” get doled out. I can’t think of a bigger kill joy than asking a six year old to sit inside and copiously copy letters and complete hand writing drills. Moving the […]
The School Garden is thriving and the students want to broadcast their success! What better way than to make signs that add color and easy to read labels so all can see and enjoy the fruits of their labor. We decided to have the older grades embark on this project, giving them the opportunity to […]
While May and June are packed with fun, the “To Do List” runs on and on. Graduations, birthdays, Father’s Day and the “End of the Year Gift” for EVERYONE. When you have one child this list might be manageable but multiply the offsprings by 2 or 4 active children and the list looks more like […]
The “Sustainability,” “Whole Foods,” “Locavore,” “Buy local…organic,” etc. is a relatively new exciting buzz in our food world. When I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I became a convert. The Kingsolver family took a 12 month challenge to eat ONLY foods grown within a 50 mile radius of their small family farm in Virginia. […]
May is a crazy month for most of us. End of school parties…projects…grading…barbecues…sports…the list goes on and on. And that’s just the START for a farmer. There are many tasks to accomplish and the calendar does not wait for a free day or nice weather. This past week, the school garden had a long list […]