GROW Team Has Great Session!

The GROW Team had a great turnout for its spring clean up April 17 when numerous students and their families came out for the latest Ravensworth beautification project. Students, parents and staff showed up with wheelbarrows, rakes, and yard tools under blue skies and balmy temperatures. While some parents manned a grill to supply volunteers with burgers and hotdogs, others raked debris, spread mulch, weeded and planted to ready Ravensworth’s grounds for the spring planting season.

GROW Team leader Fehmi Midani oversaw the workday and Ravensworth principal Pam O’Connor, vice principal Tim Paper and kindergarten teacher Adrienne Ramage pitched in, as well. The work began at 8 a.m. and a steady flow of volunteers cycled in and out throughout the day.

A focus of the efforts was renewing the 4th grade colonial herb garden. Several 3rd and 6th grade volunteers assisted in cutting back and digging out the existing herbs which had become overgrown and unattractive. They weeded and edged the bed to create a tidy garden. Using our math skills to measure the perimeter and find the area, we re-shaped the bed to make it larger and more symmetrical. To be resourceful, we re-purposed some old cobble edging stones from an unused bed to frame our new herb garden. The children collected leaf mulch, which is provided free from the county, and wheelbarrowed to to the new bed. They turned the soil and planted new herbs, finding cocoons and other insects in the soil along the way. The herb varieties include lavender, yarrow, mint, thyme, pineapple sage, fennel, lamb's ear, rosemary, chive and everlasting strawberries. These herbs are types which would have been present in colonial herb gardens and used for culinary and medicinal purposes.

We started our morning with a brief lesson on herbs and how they differ from spices; we considered how herbs have been used by many ancient cultures through time, and what their purposes have been. We looked at products that we use today with herbal ingredients such as soaps, tea and medicines. By the time we were done, the children recognized the similarity between the garden they designed and created to photos of actual gardens in Williamsburg. They were an enthusiastic and focused bunch of workers who participated in every aspect of the project. They even labeled the herbs by recycling broken pieces of concrete from the school's parking lot curb that had been crushed by snowplows this winter.

Our kids are capable of doing so much and more when we present a new challenge to them! So many lessons from their school curriculum, including math, life sciences, and social studies were echoed in this project. This project supported their classroom learning with collaborative, hands-on work.

-Julie Liu-


Editor's note: If you want to demonstrate to your children a love for growing things and community pride, there's no better place to begin than our GROW Team! Please consider volunteering - the rewards to you and your children are tremendous.