Kindergartners were out in the weeks before Thanksgiving planting daffodil bulbs in our street tree pits as an extension of their science trees unit. 
They also enjoyed examining the worms (as in the pic above!) that live in the compost we make onsite at the lower school and use in our tree pits. This — and all the other garden-based curricular extensions we do — are thanks to PTA and grant support of our partnership with the Teachers College Program on Nutrition that brings in a garden coach each year.
This year’s coach is Nicole Mabry (pictured above) — a former garden educator in New Orleans and current public health graduate student at Columbia. In addition to helping us with garden-related curricular extensions, she will be facilitating implementation of a grant we received from NYC’s Grow to Learn program to do a small-scale re-vision and re-design of our planters and garden space to support outdoor learning. More info on that coming soon!
There are many ways to support PS 8 garden programming. Montague Street restaurant b.good chose our garden program as their “community partner” and donated almost $2K in contributions from “community days” last spring. Save the d8: The first (of four) b.good community partner days for 2017 is set for Tuesday, January 3rd: 5% of all sales at the Montague Street location will be donated in cash to the PS8 PTA to support our garden programming! You can also download the b.good app — when you earn free meals, you can donate them to PS8 and its PTA, and we can use that food to support our community events (which support our programming). Get details! And, of course, you can attend our Garden Committee meetings (monthly before school, from 7:45-8:15am – next one is December 8th) and lend your volunteer power! Interested? Email the Garden Committee at gardencommittee@ps8brooklyn.org.
Photo credits to Liz Ryan
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