Planting and the need for a Scarecrow

Written by: Kirsty

With a change in seasons, it was apparent that some of our herbs in our planters had seen better days. We took the children outside and showed them the herb planters and asked them to think about what else we could grow in our gardens. We had suggestions of carrots, broccoli, onions, pumpkins and tomatoes.

After a little bit of brainstorming carrot, seeds and broccoli seedlings were planted, never having a shortage of volunteers to help with planting, thank you everyone. We have been keeping a close eye on the planters and it was with great excitement when some of the children noticed signs of growth from the seeds. We have been regularly monitoring growth and recently decided to introduce digital media in the form of the Preschool iPads into our learning, inviting some of the children to take some photographs of our plants.

As a team, we have encouraged and extended the children’s learning and interests through a range of different provocations like puzzles and books. As a group, to stretch each child’s imagination and to help them gain confidence, we set the Kowhai children a couple of challenges firstly inviting them to draw what they saw growing in the planters and then as an extension inviting them to do some observational drawings of broccoli, carrots and peas that we sourced from our fantastic chef Lee. The children’s fabulous drawings were then copied and collated and made into signs for our planters.

Through this broad ongoing investigation, we hope our children will develop working theories and scientific knowledge associated with plants and will learn to take further interest in caring for our natural environment, understand kaitiakitanga, where they will develop a love of and sense of responsibility for nature.

Our children are encouraged to be involved in taking care of the plants and sharing ideas as to how we can do this. As part of a natural extension we read the children several books all featuring scarecrows, including the popular “Dingle, Dangle Scarecrow” CD storybook.

Our children are encouraged to be involved in taking care of the plants and sharing ideas as to how we can do this. As part of a natural extension we read and shared with the children several books about planting, some of them featuring scarecrows, including the popular “Dingle, Dangle Scarecrow” CD storybook.

The idea of scarecrows piqued lots of interest and our investigations began to extend in this direction. We provided table provocations, story books, puzzles and on numerous occasions at investigation times opportunities for the children to discover different ways to be creative and expressive using a variety of materials as they all became immersed in drawing scarecrows, making mini scarecrows and drawing a big collaborative scarecrow. The aim was to create a large scarecrow to put outside and finally after several weeks of preparation the process got off the ground. The children did a great job, stuffing, cutting, sticking and finally the scarecrow, was looking like a proper scarecrow, Blues scarf included. The children decided the scarecrow needed a name and after a landslide vote he is now known as 'Rainbow’. Rainbow stands proudly near the sandpit watching over the children, If you ask the children they will say he is doing a great job of scaring away the birds.

We have finally been able to harvest some of our vegetables, we picked some peas and broccoli and shared them with the children. Our carrots are still looking a little green, but hopefully we will get to harvest those in the coming weeks. It has been lovely seeing this investigation go full circle, real garden to table learning. Over the coming weeks, the children will be invited to enjoy more experiences in the garden. We will all be keeping a watchful eye on the planter boxes to see what plants may pop up next.