Composting

This afternoon the Gardening Club will have a visitor from the Lower East Side Ecology Center coming in to teach us how to compost. According to the E.P.A.'s website, compost is organic material that can be used as a medium to grow plants. It is created by: combining organic wastes (e.g., yard trimmings, food wastes, manures) in proper ratios into piles, rows, or vessels; adding bulking agents (e.g., wood chips) as necessary to accelerate the breakdown of organic materials; and allowing the finished material to fully stabilize and mature through a curing process. Parents, you can support the learning process by asking your children what they have learned about composting, and giving your children materials they may bring to school to compost. Here is a list of materials that are able to be composted:
Animal manure
Cardboard rolls
Clean paper
Coffee grounds and filters
Cotton rags
Dryer and vacuum cleaner lint
Eggshells
Fireplace ashes
Fruits and vegetables
Grass clippings
Hair and fur
Hay and straw
Houseplants
Leaves
Nut shells
Sawdust
Shredded newspaper
Tea bags
Wood chips
Wool rags
Yard trimmings

The Gardening Club

So the gardening club is underway! We have been meeting every Friday afternoon from 2:40pm until 4:40pm. The mission of the club is to learn about global stewardship. Thus far, 20 students from grades 4 and 5 have joined the club. We have been joined by graduate students from Columbia University. These grad students are engaging our students with hands-on, inquiry based science experiments for the first hour of the program. After the first hour, our club applies what we have learned to the garden at The Bloomingdale School. So far, we have learned that we can create electricity from citrus fruit, and that buying locally gown foods can help us protect the environment. Therefore we have begun to plant the seeds of citrus fruits, and are thinking of ways to grow foods so that we can save energy and reduce pollution. It seems that all of the students in the gardening club are enjoying themselves as well as learning important information about how to better care for our planet. I'm thinking of having the club expand their service detail to include a recycling program that we could implement at PS 145M.