Ha-pea-ness!

 

At last, the first of the Autahi peas are ready to eat!

We have been dialling up our Patience since we planted the seeds during Rising 5s at the end of August...

In mid-September we noticed that they were sprouting. Exciting!

We've tried to take care of them, with regular watering. They grew amazingly fast.

Now the pods are getting fat and ready to pick. We feel like cham-pea-on pea growers!

It's fun trying to discover where the peas are hiding on the plants. All the pods are ap-pea-ling, but we're trying to pick only the fat ones. That way, the others have time to grow a bit more before we eat them.

No need for a reci-pea: our peas never get as far as the kitchen. After all, what could be nicer than popping open a freshly-picked pod and gobbling up all the little, green peas inside? This is a new experience for some - but we're hoping that all our Autahi students will give peas a chance.

And our hardcore pea fans will hap-pea-ly munch through those sweet, pea-flavoured pods, too.

Peas are a wonderful, seasonal delicacy to share with children. We firmly believe that these are the experiences that are part of living our 'flourish' model for Positive Education, connecting us to positive accomplishment, engagement, emotions and health.

And watch out: there are beans on the way, too!

Autahi and the Giant Radish

Once upon a time, some children planted some tiny radish seeds ...

And this Thursday, we dedicated a whole day to celebrating our colourful crop of radishes.

First, we looked carefully at the plants and tried to estimate how many radishes we had grown. Our estimate was 32. 

But when we pulled up all the plants and carefully counted them, we found that we had a grand total of 54 radishes!

We arranged them in size order from smallest to biggest. You'll be able to see the monster radish at the end of the row. It came from a seed that had landed in the wrong place so the plant had loads of space all to itself to grow ginormous.

When we measured it with a ruler later on, we found that it was 43 centimetres long.

We used cubes to measure the other radishes. We had to be careful to make a stick of cubes the same size as the radish and then count the cubes.

After all that gardening, counting and measuring, it was time for a snack. During snack time, we read the story of The Enormous Turnip. This got us inspired for our own writing and we decided to tell the story of our own giant radish.

 We wrote the first part of the story together ...

... then everyone had a go at drawing and writing a different ending for the story. We kept our radishes handy so that we could draw them. 

Here is our book! Do drop by and have a read. 

And, of course we had to taste our radishes, too. They were pretty good, and a bit spicy!

Here we are having a radish picnic at lunchtime.

We plan to plant something else in our veggie pod now, and see if we can grow another crop before the weather gets too cold. Watch this space!

Planting our garden

 

This week, we began planting our new outside space.

We're hoping that we can gradually turn it into a green and leafy place. Planting some seeds in the vege pod is the first step.

We decided to start with some fast-growing, edible plants: spinach, basil and radish. 

It was interesting to see the different shapes of the seeds. The spinach seeds were surprisingly gnarly.

We'll take good care of our seeds and water them regularly. Hopefully, we'll have a little crop we can eat in a few weeks time.