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Posted by Andrew Plotsky | April 1st, 2010

Continuing coverage of the Washington Youth Garden’s Garden Science program from their current education intern.

There is the Flatflap, where the arm is extended vertically in the air with the elbow locked. The hand, flat as though ready to high-five, flaps in a north-to-south manner with varying degrees of vigor.

There is the Fingerwaggle, where, irrespective of the arm angle, every finger on the hand in question wildly, aggressively writhes to it’s own inaudible rhythm. The Fingerwaggle is often accompanied by a facial expression that would generally be regarded as intolerable agony.

The previously mentioned techniques are two of the more popular that our students use to attract our attention. There’s also the Doublesingle Sweep, the Diaper Change, the Silent Poutshout, the Straight-Legged Birch, the Bounceypants. The list is quite endless, really, and as there is no end to attention-grabbing methods of a 3^rd grader, there is a similarly endless pool of questions, comments and observations that swirl just beneath the surface of their adorable little eyes.

Seemingly from nowhere, our students conjure questions from… whatever’s inside third graders…presumably fruit punch and Funyuns (which is where we come in). After a story or activity, we ask if there are any questions. Instantly the air is full of outstretched hands. Occasionally, the questions are not questions, but rather peripherally related comments or stories. More often than not, we have to move on with the lesson before everyone gets a chance to share. Given the chance, students can generally procure a question at a moments notice, sometimes with no apparent thought process.

Posted by Andrew Plotsky | February 15th, 2010

This is the second posting in a series about my internship with the Washington Youth Garden. You can find the first one on Field to Fork.

Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, seven minutes is not very many minutes. To the existence of dinosaurs, seven minutes would be a tyrannosaurus fart. Gone without acknowledge of its existence. Not even worth batting a limp, useless forearm at. To a third grader, on the other hand, seven minutes of direct eye contact and explicit questioning is an eternity. Like weeks of jury duty, hours sitting in traffic for you or me. There is little outside the realm of battery-operated devices these days that can hold a seven year old’s attention for that many minutes (which is another issue entirely).

This past week was our second of lessons with Garden Science, and we were studying the life cycles of plants. Namely, beans. Remember in elementary school when you put a bean in a cup with a wet paper towel, waited several days, and then wet yourself when the roots emerged? That’s what we’re doing this week.