Picking peas and planting beans

"The things he sees are not just remembered; 

they form a part of his soul."

Maria Montessori

Look how high Morgan is reaching to pick peas that are over her head!  It's been a "pea season" in our raised beds, that's for sure.  Our cool, wet spring was perfect, so that now, from June into July, the children have been out there picking and munching on sugar peas and snow peas every single day.  We planted five different varieties, and I got a little carried away - it's been hard to find room to plant other veggies, our beds have been so full, our peas so abundant!

Going backwards in time to four months earlier, here is our first digging day in early March, at the very end of the winter. Such joy everyone felt, to get out there with shovels in the sunshine!  Winter wasn't quite over, and two weeks later we even had a surprise late snow on the Spring Equinox.  We had already planted our first seeds.    I lined all the kids up along the edge where the wire trellis is, put seeds in their little hands, and they each pushed the seeds into the soil.

Do the children remember planting those seeds?  Can they describe the cycle that unfolded, from their digging in the ground to little round peas in their hands to the sweet crunch in their mouths?  Yes and no.  Each round of growing a garden, each vegetable or flower becomes part of a child's developing perception of reality.  It's a profound yet unconscious process, as the children begin to recognize their intimate link with the earth that feeds them.

But to make the process more concrete, to get into the science of a sprouting seed and create a more conscious learning experience, we need to slow it down.  We used beans, the best teaching seed of all.  

A few weeks ago we gathered in a group and started our classic experiments.   We placed some seeds on a tray between wet paper towels, settled some more on the inside edge of a jar filled with paper towels, and put both on our little nature table.  In the next day or two, we planted the same beans in trays and pots outside.

Over the next two weeks we got to observe the sprouting seeds up close and personal.  The first sprout, the roots reaching down, the stem reaching - and reaching - for the light.  Every day we witnessed the changes.  Using a great set of wooden puzzles, made by my friend Jake of Early School Materials up in Lafayette,  as companions to the actual sprouting seeds, we introduced vocabulary like seed coat, primary root, and cotyledon.

Last week, on the day of this photo, the sprouting experiment reached its peak. We gathered outside, laid out all the puzzles, the jar and the tray, and the beans planted in soil.  We compared the seeds growing in the pots to the ones that had been inside.  What do plants need?  Sunlight!  Soil!  Warmth!  Water!  Are the seeds in the jar "happy," do they have what they need?  No.  Were they a great teacher for us?  Yes!

This week we started to take out the pea plants, one section at a time.  The kids are carrying the luxurious vines to our compost bin, which is another great natural life cycle.  Today or tomorrow we will put out the bean plants which are bursting out of their seed-starting pots.  We'll sing our bean-planting song a few more times.  And soon the peas will be a sweet memory, until next spring comes around.

And that brings us back around to the Maria Montessori quote which began this blog:
"The things he sees are not just remembered; they become a part of his soul."