Do You Dig It?

Oops! Here is a post from this summer that I forgot to publish; however it has some great thoughts that I feel I need to share. Enjoy!


It was back to the gardens today! We had lots and lots of helping hands today. We didn't know this prior to arriving but a missionary group was in all week weeding our garden plots and they look great! What a blessing. That means that we could skip this "weedy" step and cut right to planting the seeds.


Today we planted sunflower seeds and gourds. First we had the kids work some pete moss into the soil and dig out large rocks. I have never seen kids so excited to find rocks! We made the whole rock search a competition to see how many rocks we could pull out of the soil. Let me tell ya, as soon as we said go the kids raced out into the garden and less than a minute later I had swarms of kids surrounding me holding up their rocks and showing me their latest and greatest finds. They were so proud that they had found even the smallest of rocks and the wanted to show me in the worst way. They desired my recognition and praise for the "treasure" they found.

Be imaginative. This is something these kids are constantly teaching me. Picking up rocks? Well that just sounds boring. But what if we went on a treasure hunt and found cool unique shapes, sizes and colors of objects buried in the soil. Now that sounds so fun I might start digging my own hole! At first it started off as just a rock picking day; however, as kids started picking up what they thought was history or special objects it became fun and exciting. One little boy insisted that he found a diamond, which was really just a soil plastered rock. For some reason I just wanted to tell him "no, that is just a rock!" It was then that I was reminded of how "adultish" I was being. As adults I feel we often lose this sense of wonder and creativity. We can get so wrapped up in proving the reality of  things rather than considering different perspectives. In this sense we have a lot to learn from kids. They are so easy going and wondrous! Sometimes it's ok to be a little "childish" and not so much "adutlish." (Speaking of which, why is childish a word and not adultish?  I can tell it's not by the little red squiggly line underneath the word letting me know that I have a miss spelled word. Although bothersome, I'm keeping it because I think it should be a word!)


 So, after breaking this wall of feeling the need to crush this child's dream by telling him what he was actually holding was just a plain old rock, I actually acknowledged these kids findings with a new perspective. They had bunches of fun finding rocks and other "treasures." The site is actually where a bunch of houses used to be located until they burned down in the 60s. So the things the kids were digging up were pretty cool!


After we dug and picked out all the big rocks, we then were ready to plant! They planted the sunflower seeds and gourd seeds in two different garden plots. Randomly students would come up to me and ask me if we were going to give our seeds water. They were very worried that they wouldn't grow if we didn't give them water. Although I was impressed with their concern for these seeds, more importantly this told me that they were learning! This told me that they were thinking "ok, so we planted these seeds in the ground, they are already outside getting sunlight, and now the only thing they need to grow is water." They had learned in previous lessons about the resources that plants need to grow. Instead of sitting in a classroom repeating this information and asking "hey kids what are the natural resources that plants need to grow?" and then hearing the crickets chirp in the background, kids were outside experiencing first hand what plants themselves experience. Kids were actually coming to me and asking where we could get water for the plants and seeds. This is just one of the many reasons why I strongly believe in hands on learning. Students "experience" the learning and they make these in-depth connections. I could go on about the countless benefits of experiential learning, but I think I have done enough rambling for today! There will be plenty more about experiential learning topics to talk about, so keep reading!