Windowsill Herb Garden

As you all know I strongly believe Laughing and Learning go hand in hand therefore whenever I see an opportunity arise to give my students a hands on lesson I jump at it!

Recently, I have been working with one of my grade 3 students on Procedural writing (how to make/do something). This is one form of writing I love to teach as there are just so many options for hands on learning experiences that help children to connect with their real life experiences!

I had promised my student when we started this unit that we would make a mini herb garden of sorts and she was beyond excited! Each lesson she would ask when we were doing this this activity and Thursday I was finally able to say yes! She jumped up and down on the spot and I must say it warmed my heart and brought a smile to my face reminding me of just how rewarding my job can be :)

So, after a lot of prepping and clear instructions on what was and wasn't accepted while carrying this activity out, we jumped in and put our mini garden together.

I bought this little kit from Aldi and hope they still have them in stock when I go for my weekly shop this week so I can get another and do it with my little man!

I completely forgot to take a picture of the kit and all the materials before we started (not very organised of me I know!) but in a nutshell there were three pots, seeds, 4 round blocks of dirt and a piece of chalk to use for labelling. As I was rushed for my student to get the written part of this task done I also didn't get a chance to take a picture of the finished product BUT I plan to do an update of our little windowsill garden once it takes off! So, I will share some extra pictures then :)

To start, we placed the dirt blocks into a bucket. We added both boiling water and cold water and then simply mixed until the dirt until it thickened up.

Student T recorded the name of each herb we used on the pots.

Then she filled each pot with the dirt and added the seeds. She placed some extra dirt on top to fill the pots and then popped them on a window sill. It was easy as that!

After this fun hands on experience was complete we sat down and planned our writing task for it. I will share this part when I give the windowsill herb garden update ;)