Playing with kids

The theme of this week must have been children because it seems that I spent more time with them this week then on my research :) On Wednesday for our community day we had a group of 75 five to seven year olds come to the small farm for the morning to learn about various farming-related subjects. It was a bit intense to see all those tiny children file out of one school bus, and I must confess that that age group is a little out of my comfort zone. I worked with Kristen on the compost station which consisted of trying to explain to them why nitrogen and carbon was important to a compost but I think they got it. We also helped them make little compost bags to take home with them. The morning had to be cut short though because one of the teachers was having heat-related problems and the kids were getting tired. They did get to see the cows on the farm and I was really tempted to start throwing out some cool facts about them, but I restrained myself. Uneventful research in the afternoon, although the time we have left to do this research is quickly disappearing.

On Thursday morning I went to the library to work with the Jr. Master Gardener program again. There were fewer kids this week and the topic was nutrition. We went out to work in the garden for a while, but it was so hot that we went inside for the rest of the morning. When we were in the garden I found a plant that was dying and I wanted to know what it was so I half asked it out loud and to my surprise a couple of the kids standing next to me answered the question. These kids never fail to surprise me when it comes to their knowledge about gardening. When we went inside however, I was a bit disheartened when I overheard a conversation two kids were having about which flavors of Robitussin they preferred. Then another little girl told me that she was hungry because her family had been in a hurry this morning so they stopped at McDonalds and she didn't finish her breakfast sandwich. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think it's a bit counter intuitive to send your kids to a gardening program and then feed them fast food. The rest of the morning was great and my enthusiasm was again renewed by all the friendships that are forming between the kids. I asked two of them how they became friends and they told me that the boy, Matthew, had asked the girl, Rebecca, in the library if she wanted to be his friends and she said yes and now they were friends. I wish adults could be that simple.