Vision

One day in early Spring, we were on a “Signs of Spring” walk around our neighborhood when we saw a bee buzzing around a crocus. On that same walk, we were noticing dandelions just starting to bloom and we were seeing trees budding out. These discoveries caused us to have a discussion about the importance of pollinators in our environment. We decided that we would like to learn lots more so we came up with a plan, applied for a grant and the rest is history…well, almost…the temperatures in our area aren’t conducive to outdoor planting yet so we will take our last couple of actions post-project submission deadline.

Action

*We have had a great time going on a field trip to a local nursery and learning about which flowers we could plant at school to encourage pollinators to visit. We purchased those seeds and planted many of them in egg cartons with the plan to move them outside once the time is right.
*We had someone in our community build us two garden boxes and then we filled them with soil and added some sheep manure into the soil.
*We watched many videos, read many books and conducted an exploration to learn more about how pollination works. We made “pollinators” out of skewers, pom-poms and pipe cleaners. We then moved those pollinators from flower to flower (coffee grinds/wheat germ/cornmeal) to watch how “pollen” is spread from one flower to another.
*We ordered caterpillars and have LOVED watching them eat, grow and change! They are currently in the chrysalis stage and are all hanging in our butterfly house. We can’t wait until they emerge as butterflies and we can release them and send them on their pollinating-way! We have done lots of learning about the life cycle of butterflies and have done many butterfly art projects.
*We are very interested in plant growth and how it all works. We are currently observing sprouting vegetables (celery, garlic, carrots, potatoes, pineapples). We have microgreens sprouting and re-sprouting – we love to eat them! We have a jungle of bean and pea plants and our lettuce is just starting to come up.
*We made “seed bombs” – we took dye-free construction paper and made a pulp out out it by adding water and mushing it all up in a food processor. We infused the pulp with wildflower seeds and made “bombs”. We completed a piece of shared writing – an instruction sheet for using the “bombs”, decorated some bags to put them into, stapled the instruction sheet onto the bags and went downtown Charlottetown for a walk to distribute the seed bombs in our community. People loved them!
*We went on a field trip to the Charlottetown Farm Centre and visited the Legacy Garden there. We were treated to a tour of the gardens and met a beekeeper. He gave us lots of information on the importance of bees.
*We have gathered some supplies for making bug hotels and a bee house but haven’t completed that action YET! We plan to do that this week.
*We have planted some sunflower and nasturtium seeds right in the soil in the planters and will move our seedlings outside once the timing is right.
What fun! What learning!

Reflection & Celebration

We have loved every minute of this project! We cannot wait until our butterflies emerge and we can release them in our schoolyard next to an apple tree covered with blossoms! Let’s hear it for the pollinators!