4-H in Action
Watch the Kids Grow
By Anjali Ashtaputre
On June 30, 2014, elementary school kids from San Mateo, Redwood City, East Palo Alto, and Half Moon Bay gathered at Fair Oaks Elementary School in Redwood City, California, to build and learn how to care for mini gardens. Their teachers (teenage ambassadors from around the Bay Area) demonstrated how to plant pea and sunflower seeds, with hopes of sparking an interest in home gardens or even farms.
During the lesson, the kids learned the importance of how food is produced. One of these lessons was about photosynthesis, a never ending process by which plants make food and energy. This occurs when plants take water from the ground, carbon dioxide from the air, and energy from the sunlight to make glucose (sugar). Glucose is a food source for plants that allows them to grow and understanding the process of how it is made is important for the kids to understand to keep gardens growing.
The kids next learned how to build their mini gardens. This was a sight to behold because the kids were so enthusiastic to learn and to build them. The lesson also included Energized! (a game where kids tagged each other pretending that their hands were germs as a way to learn how fast they can be spread), seeing the existing school garden, and much more.
The school garden, revitalized by an ongoing UC Cooperative Extension 4-H project called Nutrition to Grow On (Energized!), revealed to the kids the potential they have to cultivating a thriving garden. Lorena, one of the organizers, emphasizes that the goal of this program is to teach kids about where their food comes from because “most of the kids don't know [this] and don't have access to healthy foods.” With this knowledge and with the experience of “cooking” the foods, she believes that they will more likely try foods they haven't eaten before.
By the end of the lesson, the kids enjoyed making their gardens and were eager for their plants to grow in their mini gardens. They appreciated that a garden can grow and that they can harvest foods unseen to them before.
4-H members teach Fair Oaks Elementary School kids how to make a mini garden