Field Trip to the Apiary in the Growing Gardens Children's Peace Garden

"On an open lot, there's a garden patch grown by children who live in the neighborhood.

A sign on the garden's gate says Children's Garden Welcome!

That means: Come in, please. Listen, see, smell, touch- even taste."

-In the Children's Garden, by Carole Lexa Schaefer, 1994

Over the course of our summer program, the children have been learning about the lifecycle of plants, the parts of a plant, the role of insects as pollinators, and about several types of arthropods- including honeybees! Today, the children furthered their learning with an outing to visit the apiary at the Children's Peace Garden in Boulder, Colorado. The children had the opportunity to view a working beehive, taste honey, and put on special child sized beekeeper suits to interact with living bees.
Our outing began with a ride on a school bus! The children lined up attentively and rode to Boulder with impeccable manners (they did not require so much as one reminder to lower their voices). In fact, our bus driver, Patrick, remarked to me several times on the exemplary behavior of the students (an occurrence which, much to my pleasure, was repeated several times throughout the day- complete strangers came up to me while we were in the garden and remarked upon the politeness and courtesy demonstrated by the children and incredulously asked me how old they were)! Apparently, the short busses that we normally get were getting some routine maintenance; so, the children were absolutely delighted to get to ride on a full size school bus (for several, this was their first ride on a school bus)!

After a short ride, we arrived at the Growing Gardens Children's Peace Garden. The Growing Gardens is an incredible, local, non-profit devoted to cultivating community through gardening. They teach environmentally sustainable gardening programs to children and adolescents, as well as horticultural therapy programs for the elderly and the developmentally disabled. They maintain a large organic children's garden and apiary (beekeeping operation) that is visited by 1,500 children annually; additionally, they manage more than 450 community garden plots, administer the Cultiva! Youth Project (an organic market garden maintained by adolescents aged 11-19 who donate a percentage of the yield to those in need and sell the remainder at the Farmers Market), and maintain fifteen active beehives at the site.

We were fortunate to have chosen a beautiful, sunny day for our visit.


The gardens were bustling with activity; everywhere we looked, people were weeding, pushing wheelbarrows filled to the brim, or resting under the tents with cool drinks. We meandered through the garden until we met up with our thoughtful host, Assistant Director of the Children's Peace Garden, Kirsten Bell and her assistant, Ainsley.

Kirsten and Ainsley began taking the excited children on a tour of the gardens. The Children's Peace Garden consists of several smaller themed gardens- including a Butterfly/Pollinator Garden, a Pizza Garden (a vegetable garden which contains all of the toppings usually found in pizzas), a lovely gooseberry patch, a hutch covered with grape vines, and numerous plots and raised beds.

The sun shone brightly on the Flatirons in the distance as the delighted children rambled through the gardens, where they saw a variety of vegetables and flowers.

Finally, we made our way out of the gardens and down a shaded path toward the apiary.

Once the children had assembled, our thoughtful hosts began with a fun activity in which the children learned about and performed a dramatization of the lifecycle of a honey bee.

They children began their "bee life" as eggs laid singly in a cell in a wax honeycomb,

they hatched into larvae,

and were fed more than one hundred times a day by busy worker bees.

The larvae undergo several moltings before spinning a cocoon within a cell and pupating. Then, the worker bees cover the brood cells with a wax cap, from which the adult bees must eat their way out

before emerging and taking their first flight.

After the lifecycle activities, the children learned about the roles assumed by the different types of bees that live in the hive, their important role in pollination, and about the basics of honey production.

They also got to examine some hands on bee products- including honeycombs, beeswax, several preserved specimens, and one of the honey supers/frames which the bees build their combs on.

At last, it was time for the climax of our study of honeybees, the trip to a real, working, apiary hive! Beekeepers wear gloves, boots, coveralls, and a broad-rimmed hat to protect themselves from bee stings. Beekeepers traditionally wear white because bees have difficulty seeing light colors; the light-colored outfit "hides" the beekeeper from the bees.

In preparation for visiting the hive (and in the most photogenic moment of the trip), our little beekeepers donned these darling miniature beekeeping suits!

Then, our cute cadre of very excited beekeepers marched off in search of the hive.

The hive is filled with frames on which the bees build combs. Unfortunately, we were not able to take a lot of pictures here for fear of upsetting the bees, but if you have never seen a working beehive, it is quite an astounding sight (bustling and yet extremely organized). The sheer quantity of bees is staggering and there is the most incredible, audible, humming sound. It is also easy to understand the fascination many people have with these diligent workers and how they have become emblematic of hard work, perseverance, and as a metaphor for ideal civil governance. The hives at the Children's Garden were specially built with large windows on the side which allowed the children to watch the flurry of activity occurring in the hive. The children seemed absolutely transfixed by the activity of the forager bees, busily returning from the garden with pollen and nectar.

Afterwards, the children got to examine some of the beekeeping tools, including the smoker. Beekeepers spray smoke into the hives to calm the bees before checking the honeycombs. Kirsten explained that when smoke is sprayed into the hive the bees instinctively begin eating honey (if the hive were on fire this would help them to "stock up"), which causes them to become drowsy and calm.

Afterwards, Kirsten led the children through the garden to an arbor that was covered with honeysuckle vines. She asked the children what they thought nectar tastes like and why bees like to eat it; then, in a simple, but extremely effective demonstration (which seemed positively inspired to me), she allowed each of them to pick a honeysuckle blossom to sample. Needless to say, the children quickly understood the bees fondness for nectar.
Then, the children participated in a "pollinator relay." The children took turns pretending to be honeybees, racing through the gardens in search of nectar. The children got to pick a flower and return to the "hive," where they performed a bee dance to indicate where the other bees should go in search of flowers.

The children were very pleased with their flowers, and I was tremendously impressed with how much botany they had absorbed. Several of them took a few moments to locate the pollen and the various structures of their flower (hopefully, our guests were not too put off by the children's penchant for taking flowers apart- flower dissection is one of their current favorite activities).

Finally (as one relieved boy exclaimed), the children were treated to a taste of the honey from the hive. Not surprisingly, it turns out that the bees make incredibly tasty honey!

After all that running, dancing, and "flying" through the garden, it was time to take our exhausted little beekeepers back to the school.

Our sincerest thanks goes to our knowledgeable hosts, Kirsten Bell and Ainsley, and Growing Gardens, for providing the children with an amazing, hands-on experience, that I am sure the children will be talking about for a long time to come. For more information about their programs, please visit their website at: http://www.growinggardens.org/.

We would also like to thank our bus driver, Patrick, and the St. Vrain Valley School District Busses and Transportation for making our trip today possible.

Cyanotypes

The children have been learning about the different parts of a plant, including the different structures present in leaves, and we have been discussing how plants make their own food through the process of photosynthesis. Photosynthesis begins when light is absorbed by proteins that contain chlorophyll (photons hit the chlorophyll and knock loose an electron) which begins an incredibly complex process in which energy from the sun is used to convert carbon dioxide into organic compounds (glucose) and oxygen. The ability of plants to perform this vital function can be traced back to cyano-bacteria (bluish green bacteria ) which were the very first plants on Earth, and responsible for making the oxygen that built up in the atmosphere to make life possible.

Needless to say, it is difficult to comprehend how sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water can make carbohydrates and oxygen. Cyanotypes provide one opportunity for children to get a hands on, sensorial, experience with a photo-reactive chemical process and the opportunity to achieve a better understanding of chemical pigments by analogy.

Cyanotypes, or "sun prints," are an antique photographic printing process which is distinctive due to it's Prussian blue monochrome prints. The method was invented during the Victorian era, but later abandoned except as a copying method for documents and plans as "blueprints." The cyan-blue prints are created by exposing photosensitive paper to ultraviolet light as a result of the photosensitivity of iron salts. Of course, you don't have to understand any of the chemistry involved or appreciate any of the historical significance to enjoy making prints.

This is an incredibly simple lesson to set up and 2-6 year old children can make prints independently if you supply an hourglass or simple method for ensuring that the paper is exposed to adequate amounts of sunlight (we achieved good results with a 3 minute egg timer). Here is how the lesson looks on the shelf.

The children select natural artifacts, place them on the photosensitive paper, and wait until three minutes has passed. They seemed very interested in the color transformation of the paper; additionally, many found watching the sand pass through the hourglass to be an exciting point of interest.

Then the children develop their prints by rinsing them in water (where the unreacted, water-soluble, iron salts are washed away). We intensified the characteristic blue effect by adding some lemon juice to the water bath.



I recommend supplementing the experience with an art appreciation lesson wherein you show the children some classic cyanotype prints; in particular, Anna Atkins, an English botanist and the first female photographer, has some very beautiful seaweed prints in her book Photographs of British Algae.


Older children can experiment with toning (changing the color of the print)- oolong tea works well! Also, here is something else that I plan to try (and present to the children if it is successful): http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/processes/photsynthesis/photosynthesis-grow-your-own-photographic-supplies

What's the Value of a Good Kindergarten Experience? About $320,000 According to Harvard Economists

Hopefully, this isn't too self-aggrandizing, but I wanted to share an article I read this week about the value of early childhood education. As Montessori observed, it is true that the most important years in a child's life may not be those of university studies, but the formative years (when a child's brain is literally wiring itself up, learning how to store and retrieve information efficiently, and learning how to learn).

What is the value of a good kindergarten experience? Well, according to Harvard economists, about $320,000 in earnings before the age of 30 (in addition to social gains like improved physical health and lower crime rates)! Pretty staggering!

(and, oh, lower class sizes- like 13-17 vs. 22-25, apparently that helps too!)

Here's the article from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/business/economy/28leonhardt.html

Flower Dissection

"Once I tried to show some children how a flower should be dissected, and for this purpose I supplied all the necessary instruments: the botanist's needle, pincers, etc., just as is done in the university for the experiments in the natural science. My only aim was to see whether the preparations which university students make for botanical anatomy were in any way adaptable to the needs of little children. Even at the time when I studied in the botanical laboratory at the university I felt that these exercises in the preparation of material might be put to such use. Students know how difficult it is to prepare a stem, a stamen, an epithelium, for dissection, and how only with difficulty the hand, accustomed for years exclusively to writing, adapts itself to this delicate work. Seeing how skillful our children were with their little hands I decided to give them a complete scientific outfit and to test by experiment whether the child mind and the characteristic manual dexterity shown by children were not more adapted to such labors than the mind and hand of a nineteen-year old student.

My suspicion proved correct. The children with the keenest interest dissected a section of violet with remarkable accuracy, and they quickly learned to use all the instruments. But my greatest surprise was to find that they did not despise or throw away the dissected parts, as we older students used to do. With great care, they placed them all in an attractive order on a piece of white paper, as if they had in mind some secret purpose."

-Dr. Maria Montessori, The Advanced Montessori Method, 1917

For most people, a dissection set would not be something you would expect to find in a preschool classroom. Nevertheless, Flower Dissection is a classic Montessori lesson, which happens to fit in very nicely with our summer units of study- botany, arthropods, and pollinators. The children have been learning to identify the parts of plants and learning about the functions of the different structures. Flowers are particularly interesting to children because of their diversity and their beauty, and they are crucial to achieving an understanding of the life cycle of plants (and an understanding of how plant structures relate to their functions and plant adaptations). Like any Montessori work, entrusting the child with real, high quality, adult tools, which are appropriate for their development and to the work at hand, conveys an attitude of respect for the child and for the work with which they are engaged.

Dissection begins with selecting a suitable flower (lilies, tulips, daffodils, alstroemarias, and gladiolus work best).


Then, the child identifies and removes the sepals (which make up the calyx) and the petals (which make up the corolla); these structures are really just modified leaves. Together, they are called the perianth. It is particularly interesting to discuss the nectar guides (markings which are sometimes visible to humans that are believed to make the flower more attractive to pollinators and particularly visible under UV light). Additionally, the child will probably be surprised by the amount of nectar and pollen which is visible.



Then the child can carefully remove the stamens and identify the anther, filament, and pollen sacs.

Finally, the child can locate the pistil (and identify the stigma, style, and ovary). A quick cut through the center of the ovary reveals the seed-like structures called the ovules, which contains the unripe female sex cells and become the seeds when fertilized).

The duration and quality of the children's attention to this work is just as remarkable as Montessori described. Many of them were driven to repeat the activity several times with different types of flowers

and, as Dr. Montessori correctly observed, the children were keenly interested in carefully preserving the dissected structures. I am always amazed by how aptly her observations correctly describe the abilities and aptitudes of children educated according to her principles nearly one hundred years later (and by how radical her ideas may still appear).