Fayette County MGVs Partner with Carnegie Public Library

Jan. 8, 2020
MGVs assist youth gardeners harvest produce from the Carnegie Public Library Youth Garden

The Fayette County Master Gardener Volunteers (FCMGVs) and the Carnegie Public Library teamed up to bring together youth, aged 3 to 8, to learn about plants and gardening. This year’s theme is Discover, Create, Record.

The program had four sessions. The first session was to plant the garden. We discovered and created the garden. We took pictures of the garden to watch its progress.

The theme of the second session was The Science of Soil and Seed. The FCMGVs brought several buckets of soil from different places for the kids to look through. They used magnifying glasses to see what was there. Rolly Poly bugs were the favorite thing.

The kids created covers for journals. They used the pounded plants method to transfer flower and leaf patterns to watercolor paper. Soil thumbprint bugs crawled around their flowers and leaves.

The third session was The Power of Plant Parts. The program concentrated on flowers, leaves, roots, seeds, stems, and fruit. What Part Do We Eat? was the theme of a scavenger hunt in the garden.

FCMGVs brought all kinds of examples of plant parts. At a table in the garden, kids learned that asparagus has male and female plants, that oak gall was a deformation of the leaf, and that there are many different leaf, seed, and flower shapes.

In August, the final session was be a salsa party. They discovered the Farmers’ Market (FM). Since the FM is on Saturday and the program is on Tuesday, the FCMGVs set up a mock Farmers’ Market. Four groups of kids used fake money to buy their ingredients as well as harvest what they could from the garden. Each group picked from a variety of ingredients to create their own salsa. There were four very different salsas. One included pineapple and mango.

The kids loved the activities in the garden. The FCMGVs loved being reminded how wonderfully different kids and plants are.

Written by Sara Creamer

 

 

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