Summer Garden Gathering :: 2

At this week's summer garden gathering, we watered the dry soil and drying plants, harvested a few beans, read several books about the seed to plant process, shared some freshly picked local blueberries, and made our own garden observation journals from recycled materials. If you missed making the journals, there are many online resources to help you make one of your own.

www.makingbooks.com has several different journal types that could be used for a garden observation journal. We made a modified Stick and Elastic Book recycling a cereal box for the cover and using a magnolia twig for the stick.

You could also use the instructions on the www.kidsgardening.com website here. This journal is slightly more involved to make, but the helping hands of a parent could make it possible. If you make a journal on your own at home, please bring it to the garden to show the rest of us and to use for your observations!

The books we read and perused were from the Jackson-Hinds Library System. We checked these out from the Willie Morris Branch from the 580's of the children's section. The children at our gathering would have read every book if we had let them! They were so interested in the illustrations and photographs and hungry to learn more about plants. The last book we read was about hungry plants or carnivorous plants. Everyone was fascinated and learned something new. If you have gardening books at home or visit a public library to check some out, bring them to share with our gardening group!

Lastly, here are some ideas for how to use your hand-made field journal:

• Choose a plant and observe it every day or once a week for a period of time. Really look at it closely. Measure it and record its growth. Sketch it. Photograph it. Ask questions about it.
• Write poetry about a plant, gardening, or eating something from the garden.
• Write a short story about a gardening experience.
• Make plans for what you might want to plant next in your garden.
• Collect photos of plants from seed catalogs, newspapers, or magazines.
• Record things you learn about plants from gardening books checked out of the library. A librarian can help you find fiction and nonfiction books about plants or gardening.
• Include a recipe you used to prepare something harvested from the garden.
• Write from a specific perspective (other than your own), such as that of worm tunneling under their green oasis.
• Find a spot outside and sit quietly for 5 minutes. Use your senses to absorb the scene and then record observations, ideas, and feelings. What do you hear, see, smell, taste, feel?
• Doodle, draw, paint, collage, reflect. . .
  
• What ideas do you have?

You can bring your field journal to the garden each week to share with the group and to continue your observations about the progress of the garden. If you keep your field journal all summer, you will have something to share with your new classmates and your new teacher when you start school in August! You can also share it at our Summer's Celebration on August 5th, 2009!

It is not too late to join the work and fun of the Casey Garden! If you are interested, post a comment below. Everyone is welcome. Coming next Wednesday: a field trip to the Tougaloo Sustainable Community Garden!

Summer Garden Kick-Off

On Friday, June 5, 2009, parents, students, teachers, and friends of Casey Elementary met for a summer orientation and preview of summer gardening events. In the photo above, Melanie Allen prepared tomatoes from the farmer's market with basil from our garden! Serenity Luckett (above right), gave a history of the garden project and introduced future summer activities. Since Casey is a creative arts school, we especially hope to encourage students and families to create art inspired by the garden. Gardening + Art = gARTening!

Andy Williamson (camera-man in bottom left corner), from Mississippi Public Broadcasting's Mississippi Roads, is following the Casey Garden throughout the summer to produce a show about gardening in schools. He hopes that his piece will inspire other schools to catch the gardening bug. Mr. Williamson also filmed footage at garden activities during the Casey Family Arts Festival and when students harvested lettuce and spinach for a teacher appreciation salad during the last week of school.

During the orientation, Mrs. Allen helped the children label all plants, harvest vegetables that were ready, and plant new plants. We harvested onions, cabbages, Swiss chard, and pole beans that everyone could take home for cooking and eating. We also fed the Casey turtles some of the cabbage! We planted eggplant, watermelon, sunflowers, and cucumber plants.

As a final activity, Julie Owen helped students to plant their own pots with zinnia seeds and their own peat pellets with a squash seed for germinating at home. We encouraged all participants to monitor the progress of their seeds and sprouts with measurement and careful observation. Some of the squash seedlings may be transplanted to the Casey Garden in empty portions of the beds.

Students gathered outside of the "turtle courtyard" to watch the turtles munch away on cabbage leaves placed out for them only minutes before.

The next garden meeting is Wednesday, June 10, 2009, at noon. Please bring a picnic lunch and plenty of water to drink! We will be indoors for part of the meeting to make our own garden observation journals out of recycled materials. Please bring any empty cereal boxes you may have, magazines or newspaper photos of gardens, seed catalogs, or drawings that can be cut and pasted to decorate our covers.

If you are interested in participating in the Casey Garden, please post a comment below. We need families to take turns watering the garden each week. A tentative schedule for summer garden activities is listed below, but please be aware that events/dates may change as the summer progresses.

• June 5: Orientation, planting of seeds in individual pots as well as garden boxes,

• June 10: Regular picnic, make observation journals from recycled materials, art introduction

• June 17: Picnic and trip to Tougaloo garden
  

• June 24: Regular picnic day with book reading or garden activity

• July 1: Regular picnic day with book reading or garden activity

• July 8: Meet at Farmer's Market in Jackson, take tour of market and talk to farmers, each child buy one item, meet back at Casey for picnic and discussion about farmer's market

• July 15: Regular picnic day with book reading or garden activity

• July 22: Tour Mynelle Gardens and learn about flowers there
  

• July 29: Regular picnic day with book reading or garden activity

• August 5: Garden celebration with slide show and art presentations by kids. Teachers report August 6.
  

Also, check out this wonderful website full of resources and information about gardening with kids.

http://www.kidsgardening.com/

If you were at the garden on Friday, we would love to hear what you or your children thought about the day's activities. Please comment below!

JumpstART at The Mississippi Arts Center

Barr Elementary worked with the Mississippi Museum of Art on these collages from recycled materials depicting places in our community for their JumpstART project. JumpstART, a program of the Ask for More Arts Initiative is comprised of 21 JPS elementary schools. Parents for Public Schools- Greater Jackson is the convening partner of the Initiative.

Clausell Elementary created Chinese puppets using recycled milk gallons, brads, and coat hangers. When students from Casey saw these, they wanted to take them down from the wall, give them life, and improvise their own puppet show!

Third grade students from Casey's after-school ballet program with Ballet Mississippi toured the JumpstART exhibit after rehearsal for their upcoming recital at Thalia Mara Hall on Tuesday, May 12, at 6:00 pm. Here, they show off their ballet expertise in front of the art they created in partnership with artists George Miles and Shambé Jones.

This Casey student's writing includes hopes for her own future as well as Jackson's future:

I want to be an architect when I grow up so I can help people rebuild and redesign old buildings. It would help Jackson because Jackson has a lot of old buildings. I want to help make them a better place so people can enjoy them. I hope that other people will rebuild buildings. I want to have some buildings look like art. They will be colorful.

The JumpstART project gave the children of Jackson some colorful days. For some students, the JumpstART project provided their first opportunity to paint or work with an artist. For other students, the project may have helped them learn a core curriculum area at a deeper level or experience an art form in a new way. For some students, the JumpstART project may have opened doors or planted seeds for future careers. The city of Jackson should be proud of what Ask4MoreArts and Parents for Public Schools Greater Jackson has done working together with Jackson Public Schools, the business community, and local artists. As a parent, I have been inspired and reminded of the hope that springs from a community working together towards the common goal of creating rich learning experiences for the children of this city.

If you want to learn more about JumpstART, try these links:

The Jackson Free Press featured an article about JumpstART here.

You can read about the partnership between artist Sarah C. Campbell and Davis Magnet School on her blog here.

You can read articles about Casey's Jumpstart project on this blog under the label "JumpstART 2009."

The JumpstART Exhibit is currently running through May 17, 2009, at The Mississippi Arts Center.

Rhymes on Rhymes Place

close up of an original poem by Hannah

the recycled billboard waiting to be unveiled

more rhymes-- some familiar and some new

Art smart parents prepare bubbles for the celebration.

The last week of April hosted another successful year of Rhymes on Rhymes Place. Casey Elementary's carpool line is on a street named Rhymes Place. When her daughter was a first grade student at Casey, Thea Faulkner had a light-bulb moment while waiting to pick up her daughter in the Rhymes Place line. After talking and brainstorming with other parents, Rhymes on Rhymes Place was begun. This year's event is the third annual celebration of poetry and rhyming. It is a sustainable and special project coordinated by art smart parents who know that supporting teachers and students in creative ways helps everyone learn more and have fun in the process!

This year's parents assisted and led events all week long with an interactive and arts-integrated visit from Mother Goose (Julie Owen) and a visit from Monique McMillon who assists children in making special hats that correlate to poetry. Parents help children make pop-up books for their rhymes, they supervise writing rhymes on the sidewalk with chalk, and they facilitate copying rhymes onto a recycled billboard that becomes the Rhymes Place banner.

On the final day of the week-long focus on rhymes and poetry, all first grade students help to unveil their collective masterpiece on Rhymes Place. Parents provide bubbles and popsicles to help the children celebrate their hard work and creativity. Below is a short video of the unveiling!



If you are a first grade parent, I would love to hear about your thoughts and experiences of this special event. What did your child or children learn about rhyming and poetry? Did they have good stories to tell about the Rhymes on Rhymes Place week? Having participated in the event for three years, I believe it improves each year from everyone's ideas and collective wisdom.

Casey Arts Alive!

Last Saturday, families, teachers, and volunteers from the community spent time creating together and celebrating Casey Elementary. Over 40 people-- parents, staff, and community members-- gave time or resources to make this event happen. Thank you so much! Over 120 people attended the festival. The visual art contest had 25 entries. The Poetry Out Loud Celebration had over 15 entries-- including some last minute interest. The Art Smart Committee hopes that Casey Arts Alive will become an annual event and that each year's group of art smart parents will feel free to create the festival in new and exciting ways.

Below are slide shows from the day's events:

Dancing Together with instructor Sonita Singh



Visual Art Contest with judges Rachel Misenar, Roz Roy, and Limeul Eubanks and coordinated by Stephanie Ivy

Knitting Together with instructors Bonnie Bowley, Jennifer Deaton, Susan Nix, Donna Evans, and Kathy Devenney

Drawing Together with instructors Adrien Caroll-Perkins and Shannon Frost



Gardening Together with instructors Melanie Allen, Mrs. Morgan, and Robby Luckett

Music Together with Strings Instructor Tammy Luke and strings students

Transformation

Transformation

We searched for tiny, white worlds,
eggs on milkweed,
like Horton and his speck of dust.

Now, we are observing
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
who must eat
and grow,
eat
and
grow.

Watching children
watch their caterpillars
and care for them
creates a chrysalis
for us to share.

Our wonder spins the silk button that
anchors our retreat and reflection.

We become more.
We are monarchs.

We emerge
together,
daily,
to fly on wings of
books, drawings, dances,
paintings, poems, stories,
questions, songs, gardens,
and dreams.

Over the weekend, one of the monarch butterflies that my family and I have been raising emerged from her chrysalis. We did this project with several other Casey families after we rescued the eggs and harvested milkweed during a special Monarch Butterfly Rescue program of the Clinton Community Nature Center. I highly recommend this annual event to all families!

I wrote "Transformation" during the process of raising "Matilda" (in photos above) from an egg to a butterfly with my children and sharing her with groups of students at various schools. I had intended to read the poem for the Poetry Out Loud portion of our Casey Family Arts Festival on Saturday, May 2, but I couldn't find my poem when it was my turn.

I also wrote this poem while writing an essay about arts integrated education for Anne Foster's Education Blog for change.org. I do not claim to be a poet. However, I love reading poetry, and I like how the process of writing a poem distills my thoughts to what is essential. Both the field study/scientific experience of raising the monarch butterflies and the creative process of crafting my poem informed the writing of the essay. Likewise, drafting the essay informed the development of the poem. Finally, a little bit of my background as a children’s librarian found it’s way into the poem, too.

Casey Elementary and its emphasis on arts integration has transformed my children's lives and my life as a parent (and librarian), too.

photos of "Matilda the Monarch" taken by Julie Owen on May 3, 2009

Rhymes, Garden, Art, and Family Fun!

So much is happening in the Casey community this week that it is difficult to keep up with everything! Hopefully, I can pique your curiosity with these collages and short descriptions of each event. During the next two weeks, I will follow up with individual posts for each project. Art smart parents have been very busy!

First grade parents successfully implemented the third annual Rhymes on Rhymes Place complete with pop-up book making, poetry reading, arts integrated rhyming activities, banner making, and more.

The garden is growing, and will be featured as one of the main activities at our Casey Family Arts Festival on Saturday, May 2, from 1-4 pm. Stay tuned for a special announcement regarding Mississippi Public Broadcasting and our garden project!

Casey's JumpstART project is on display along with other projects from Ask4More Arts schools in the district at the Mississippi Arts Center now through May 17. The Arts Center is open Monday - Saturday, 10 am - 6 pm and Sunday, 1 pm - 5 pm. The exhibit opening is Saturday, May 2, 2009, from 10 am - 2 pm. You don't want to miss this amazing exhibit of student work with artists and teachers from 21 elementary schools in Jackson Public Schools.

In the collage above, judges score art entries in the visual art contest for the first ever Casey Family Arts Festival on Saturday, May 2, from 1-4 pm. Hands-on activities will be offered from 1-3 pm. Poetry Out Loud is from 3 to 4 pm. Come join us as we celebrate "Casey Arts Alive: A Celebration of Creating Together!" The visual art entries are on display. Hands-on activities are Gardening Together, Knitting Together, Dancing Together, and Drawing Together. This event is offered by Casey families for the Casey community.