Earn your volunteer hours early by bringing your family to the TMA Garden Workday on September 29 from 8-2 pm. HEROES and the Garden Team will be there preparing the garden for our children to start planting, exploring, and composting. Bring gloves, hats, sun block, and lots of water. Refreshments will be provided. Come for all or just part of the time.
Adam Whyte said his teacher asked him to draw what he liked to do with his mom. So, he drew a picture of the Garden Sale. He drew the TMA Store, flowers, pumpkin bread and a green plastic pitcher his mom uses for smoothies. Adam said he likes the sale because he buys pumpkin bread, lemon pops and seaweed. (Naomi Dei Rossi’s kale chips!) Next year Adam will be an incoming Kindergartener.
The Garden Sales team wishes to thank the TMA community for enthusiastically supporting our weekly sales efforts!! We have thoroughly enjoyed providing produce and creating foods and treats with a fun garden twist. Remember the beet smoothies, kale chips and mac n’ cheese with squash? We look forward to bringing back these “best sellers” plus many other goodies next school year to help support PTO programs. Have a safe and healthy summer!
Naomi Dei Rossi, Ellen Kinoshita, Joyce Howie, Carolyn Demmerle, Leda McCarry, Lori Kroko, Sophie Ngeth and Jennifer Whyte
This year, the Garden Sales Team helped raise $7,505.43. $2,000 of that was from the Whole foods grant, but the rest was raised through garden sales! Our awesome team includes Naomi Dei Rossi, Ellen Kinoshita, Joyce Howie, Carolyn Demmerle, Leda McCarry, Lori Kroko, Sophie Ngeth and Jennifer Whyte. They deserve a huge thanks!
All the second grade students take turns collecting food scraps like banana peels, apple cores, and egg shells to feed the earth worms in our worm compost bins.
Garden Energy Pyramid: The Energy Pyramid is a 4th grade Science Standard concept that the 4th graders learn about when they participate in the hot compost program.
The second grade students wear vests when they collect food scraps to tell other students what our earthworms can and cannot eat.
Who would have guessed first graders like salad? In March, Mrs. Potsdam’s students harvested lettuce and peas, and had a feast afterwards, enjoying letuce and peas with ranch dressing! Many students asked for seconds, and all were able to see the beauty of growing your food, harvesting it yourself, washing it, and putting it on your plate to enjoy!
The 2nd and 4th grade composting programs were designed by Mark Hay of Coast Live Oak School. Parents who are fortunate enough to be the classroom COMPOST Garden Master, learn first hand how to compost and the science behind it. He co-teaches the first two composting classes with the class COMPOST Garden Masters and makes himself available via phone and email throughout the year. He is a great teacher who engages every student. Parents don’t just learn about composting, they learn how to manage groups of kids to keep them engaged, as well.
Our Tustin Memorial Academy School Garden is a science laboratory where students learn CA State Science Standards through real, hands-on experiences, long term observation, and data collection. TMA students are able to observe real processes like decomposition in hot compost pile, over extended periods of time, and collect data to understand these processes. The real data students collect is synthesized in the classroom using CA State Standards in Math.
These two PowerPoint presentations, 2nd Grade Worm Compost and 4th Grade Hot Compost, are part of the year-long composting programs for 2nd and 4th grade. Parents and Garden Masters, you can watch these to see the concepts we study in the compost programs, and to learn more about composting yourself!
Garden Beautification Day is coming up on April 21st from 8-1 pm.
Short on Volunteer Hours? Come help spruce up the garden and get your hands a little dirty! Don’t forget to bring your hats, gloves, sun-block, snacks and of course plenty of water! We can use all the hands we can get for all or just a portion of the time.
Join the Can You Dig It Garden Committee in the TMA Garden, Saturday, March 9 from 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. We’ll be selling tomato, bell pepper, hot pepper, squash, cucumber and zucchini plants grown in the TMA garden.
Pick up some plants for your garden while supporting the TMA PTO!
Mrs. Wigley’s kindergartners have been busy in the garden. They’ve already planted and harvested a bed of radishes this year and are now growing yummy carrots. Mrs. Chavez taught them the life cycle of a plant from seed to veggie. They were able to pick their radishes, wash them and take them home for their families.
They have also been very busy keeping the garden clean. In December, they had a great time re-mulching the strawberry bed with straw to keep the soil moist. Then in January, their favorite thing to do was rake leaves and add them to the compost pile.
Alder Lam was pushing the cart of leaves to the compost pile and said, “Wow, this is like we are real garden workers!” And Emily said, “Yes, this is so much fun!”
OC Organic Garden Blog