Ella Lewis School is a small PreK-5 elementary school located in the beautiful coastal town of Steuben in Washington County. The school garden started in 2013 and includes a vegetable and herb garden plus a hoop house.
The Ella Lewis School garden usually has pumpkins in it for the school to carve at Halloween. However, the last few years they were infested with squash beetles so this past spring they decided to change things up a bit by letting the students decide what to plant for the school to enjoy in the fall. This year the 5th graders chose to plant cucumbers, carrots, watermelon and tomatoes as well as nasturtiums and marigolds. The students were also responsible for watering the garden and picking the vegetables.
The first week of school the students picked all the carrots and then returned to their classrooms to work in groups to wash and cut the carrots. The carrots were arranged on baking trays and then their school cook roasted them for lunch so the whole school got to try them! Students also made pickles from the cucumbers they picked with each group following a recipe to make a quart of garlic dill pickles. The pickles will be shared with the school community soon!
The other really amazing part of the school garden is the milkweed bed. The school has lots of monarchs that lay their eggs on the milkweed and one of the 3rd grade science units is about survival and life cycles. On the first day of school the teacher took each of her grade 3-5 classes out to see the milkweed bed to look for caterpillars. They collected caterpillars and brought them inside with milkweed leaves for them to eat and put them in a terrarium. The students get to watch them grow, turn into a chrysalis and then hatch into a butterfly! This year they actually got to observe 5 of the caterpillars make their chrysalis!! After the butterflies hatch and dry their wings, the class takes them outside and releases them.
Want to know more?!
- Danielle Wells at dwells@rsu24.org
- Ella Lewis School
