Cabbagetown Naturalist News
December 2014
As usual, our friends are working hard to prepare our plot in the Cabbagetown Community Garden for winter
regeneration. They have been weeding, raking and pulling up dead plants.
The children of the Frogs class have been thinking about Mulberry losing her leaves. They have decided they are worried
about her staying warm so they wrote her a letter.
“Dear Mulberry, We would like to come over to your park to play. Can we? It’s getting cold and you’re going to lose your
leaves but we can make you a scarf. We will help you get warm again Mulberry! Love, Elias and Teo!”
The children of the Frogs class asked the children of the Cats and Ladybugs classes to collect Mulberry’s leaves on one of
their trips to the park with Ms. Ina and Ms. Julia. Of course, they agreed!
Once the younger children returned to our school with baskets of Mulberry’s leaves, the Children of the Frogs class got
right to work sewing Mulberry’s scarf.
The children of the Ladybugs class are also delighting in sewing Mulberry’s winter scarf. We are planning to give
Mulberry her scarf during Las Posadas.
The children of the Frogs
class are continuing to ask
big questions about the
food we’re eating for lunch
and conducting
experiments to answer
their questions. This month
we asked the question
“Why is okra SO slimy?”
“Someone put slimey
stuff in it.” -Colin
“Maybe because you
have to cook it?” -Zach
“I think okra is so slimy
because of the seeds!”
-Isla
After dissecting dried okra from
our garden and fresh okra from
our CSA “We figured it out!”
exclaimed Isla, “Okra is slimy
because of it’s seeds!” The Children of the Frogs class have introduced a new member into their classroom! Mrs. Candace found a baby snake
while raking leaves in her yard. Together we discovered that he is a very friendly worm snake. He eats worms! We
decided to keep him because we love to dig up worms in our garden and in our courtyard. We are in the process of
discussing names and creating a larger habitat for him.
“Maybe Stripe!” -Zach
“I think Greggy.” -Ronan
“How about we name him Peanut
Butter?” -Ford
“That’s good because I love Jelly!”
-Cruz
Great news! We finally got the go ahead to start using our compost bin! We’ve been collecting compostable materials in
the big yellow bucket that lives in the kitchen. Our friends have enjoyed sharing the list of compostable materials that we
made, with teachers and the children of the other classrooms.
In the photos above the children of the Frogs class are taking the compost they collected after snack time to the big yellow
bucket in the kitchen. Later they took the yellow bucket out to our big compost bin.
In the photos below Zoe and Isla are presenting the children of the Ladybugs class with a list of compostable materials
and a bucket of their own to collect their compostable snack and lunch materials.
“A compost bin is where you put these things that you don’t want anymore, so you’re not wasteful.” -Isla
Our big yellow compost
bucket that lives in the
kitchen.
The small
white
compost
bucket that
lives in the
Ladybugs
classroom
for
collecting
snack and
lunch
compost.
The compost bin on the
playground, where we
empty all the buckets.
The glass jar in the Frogs
class for collecting snack
compostables.