Parents and kids gardening together

We have a nice little group at Ravensbury where parents and children do some gardening together first thing in the morning. Two of the parents have gone on to get allotments and are now teaching me things I didn't know.

Pea maths

Just when the gardening group think they've got our of doing maths, it's pea maths time! Planting seeds is a nice opportunity for children to practice counting, do some multiplication and division.

New garden at Chatsworth

No, no that Chatsworth, the famouse Derbyshire stately home.

Chatsworth Futures is a specialist college in Salford for 19-25 year olds who have profound learning disabilities and autism. They asked me to help them turn this unpromising patch of land into a garden so we'll be laying out raised beds, planting fruit trees, bushes and a herb bed.

Planting a forest

We've just finished planting 400 trees at Armitage on the school grounds. Children from Nursery to Y6 were involved. We're hoping that the trees will help to reduce air and noise pollution from the nearby main road as well as improving the view, providing a wildlife habitat and an area for children to explore.

Schools can get free trees from The Woodland Trust and it's a really simple matter to plant them: dig hole, put tree in hole. A great job for a sunny winter day.

Armitage insect houses

We made these fine looking insect houses at Armitage. Two Y6 boys did all the work, cutting the frames to size, filling them with different materials and then adding some wire mesh to hold everything in. It took a while but the results were worth it.

Corny!

We tried growing corn at Ravensbury and a lot of it didn't ripen due to the poor summer. Still we got some really nice cobs. We put them in the microwave for 8 minutes and had corn on the cob. Growing corn is perfectly feasible in northern England but this was a big surprise for a lot of people in school!

Collecting sunflower seeds

A great autumn activity is to collect seeds from plants that have finished growing. Here is part of a sunflower head we grew at Armitage. You can also do this with peas, beans, rocket, radish and many flowers. The trick is to leave the seeds to dry on the plant and only take them when the frosts are about to start.

Picking the seeds out is a really nice, quiet, therapeutic activity. A colleague at Armitage thinks it should be reserved for the adults in the school!