Field Trip!

On Thursday, we had some special visitors to our house...approximately 60 kindergarteners! Dan and I have started going to the nearby kindergarten, which is about 2 ½ blocks away from our house, one day each week to teach a little something (eg. how to brush their teeth, wash their hands, etc.) We received a syllabus from the teachers there, so we can contribute to the themes they are already learning about. For the first class – which Dan couldn’t go to because of a Peace Corps training – I read Buenas Noches, Luna, the Spanish version of the beloved classic, Good Night, Moon, because the kids were learning about how to greet people.

The kiddos huddled around the garden

Our second class, we led a field trip to our house to show them our vegetable garden and compost pile. After leading the children up the street and into our yard, which felt eerily like being the Pied Piper, we had the children gather around our small chicken wire fence, which encloses the garden, to learn about growing produce. We identified the rows of fruits and veggies – cucumber, lettuce, tomato, spinach, artichoke (which they had never heard of, and which is not growing particularly well), carrot, and watermelon. We explained the purpose of the fence around the garden by pointing to the chicks that were tromping around our yard. We also discussed the growth of each plant and why we believed some were growing better than others (for example, the lettuce has thrived in this climate, but the watermelon does not receive enough sun).

Cucumber on the left and lettuce on the right (salad, anyone?)

Then we walked over to the compost pile, and when Dan asked the children what they saw, they responded “¡Basura!” or “Garbage!” The eggshells, fruit peelings, cow manure, and leaves did indeed look like a pile of garbage, but we tried to explain why those particular items were there. After talking for a while about “plant food,” Dan finished up the lesson by pointing out the skeletal shells of what had formerly been locusts, which appeared on some of our trees a week or so ago. The children were delighted by the delicate, translucent, insect forms, and we were soon surrounded by the outstretched hands of children – the girls were as excited as the boys – hoping to receive one of the precious gifts.

Think cliff hanger, only on a smaller scale and confined to the insect world

Of course, kindergarteners are still too young to be starting their own vegetable garden, but we wanted to show them that even within the city limits, healthy fruits and veggies can be grown, and maybe they will be inspired to have a garden of their own some day. As far as the compost pile goes, in a country where most people burn their trash – most places don’t have garbage pickup, and those that do have their garbage burned by the local government (Siguatepeque’s trash is burned outside of the city, overlooking a watershed) – any time we can provide people an alternative use for some of their trash, we seize the opportunity.