Visiting Tylerton Island and learning about the Chesapeake Bay

The past few days I went on one memorable adventure. Since I was chosen as a teacher of the year, we were given a trip to Smith Island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay! I walked away with a great group of new friends and a fire in my soul to make the world a better place.

Such a beautiful little town with amazing people!

A baby blue crab that we found combing grasses in the Bay!

We have a lesson with a local and she taught us how to make a Smith Island cake!

Sunrise canoeing in the bay!

We caught crabs!

I found a beekeeper on the island!

I got to pull in the rake that we used on the seas grass!

Kiss the fish before you set the trap!

My napkin for the couple days!

We found a pomegranate tree!

The compost bin in the kitchen

The compost bin outdoors!

I loved this sink setup!

The facility that is run by The Chesapeake Bay Foundation was beautifully green. There was a compost bin, recycling and the kitchen that was so efficiently green. I can’t say thank you enough to the people who made this happen. I am one happy greenie and I can’t wait to share with my students! Students learn even better when they can tell that you are passionate about certain topics, and they will definitely see my love come out when I talk about the bay from now on!

Wednesday walk through the garden 7/10

The hot weather paired with the rain showers have made the garden pop! We have been harvesting lots of zucchini and a couple dragon tongue beans.

Here’s how things are growing:

Grow pumpkin vines, grow!

Corn!!!!

Dragon tongue beans

Beautiful tomato

Tomato jungle!

Baby jalapeño

Tons of tomatillos!

Ground cherries!

Yellow zinnia

I spent a little bit this morning teaching littles about beekeepers and pollinators. They lived the monarch caterpillar that I brought and I left them with a butterfly weed to plant.

Keep blooming friends! 🌸💚

A Great Earth Week!

This week started off with my family composting their food waste at our Easter get together!

On a Earth Day I took the scenic route and walked to work! It was a great workout! (Our view really is absolutely beautiful up here!)

The next day at school, my husband picked up the topsoil for our raised bed garden and my bff teacher and I were able to get the bed ready for planting during our planning!

And the students were able to get radishes and leaf lettuce planted the next day!

On Friday we held a school wide composting day and the students checked out some of the bottom of the compost pile. They loved seeing what their pizza crusts and other leftovers turned in to!

And check out how much trash was picked up at our town wide clean up!

We had close to 40 volunteers! I’m hoping to keep this going again next year and bring in even more help!

And look at this gem that my boy found sticking up out of the dirt in a ditch:

This evening I was cutting the grass. When I looked down, I was shocked to see these beautiful mushrooms sticking up out of the landscaping! They will be delicious!

And finally, I took in a few hens that tended to be escape artists and enjoyed visiting a neighbor. They are fitting in well so far! And, they lay beautiful blueish-green eggs!

It was a great green week and I’m looking forward to continuing to spread more green-ness wherever I go!

Keep blooming friends!

Best week ever!!!

Remember how I said that I was hoping to be teacher of the year for the whole county? Well, I won!!!

I was so surprised!

It was the best feeling in the world! And I can’t wait to spread my love for teaching little humans how to take care of our Earth! (Maybe I can get more adults on board with changing their wasteful ways!)

And back to the prepping of the garden: lots of plants are growing under the grow lights!

Little lupine

Milkweed!

Oxheart tomatoes

Purple tomatillos

Today was a big recycling day at school! We collected around another 20 pounds of plastic film. And, I dropped off the plastic bottles, magazines and newspaper to the proper bins after school.

Plastic bottles and apples for the chickens

Magazines and newspapers

Chickens enjoying the leftover apples!

We completed a lab that involved taste testing apples after we learned about the process of selection! My students are never surprised with me saying “put the leftovers in the bag because the chickens will love them! And they did!

The new board that I chalked, since spring is supposed to be here! After a week like this one, I definitely feel like I am blooming where I am planted!

Have a great weekend, and you guessed it, keep blooming friends!

Composting at school

The time has finally come! It was not a well loved idea throughout our county, but change is hard. (Especially if you have not composted yourself before!) I know that we need to teach these youngsters how to compost and be less wasteful, and I’m proud to say that there were many learning moments!

First up was setting up the bin! The location had already been suggested by our composting guru/consultant. I just had to put the bin in place and stake it down. The county that I live in waste management actually donated 2 of these bins to our school!

Set up and ready in the new location! 

Then, I put some newspaper down to keep the grass from growing in there, a few leaves that were right beside the bin and next up were some leaves. It was topped off with a touch of compost from my bin to get it started!

All ready to start composting! 

On Wednesday’s lunch shift I went down to the cafeteria to sort out our third grade’s leftover lunches. And here is what we noticed:

1. Kids took straws even if they had no intention of using them. (And extra straws!)

2. They take stacks of napkins, instead of just 1!

3. Some kids didn’t even touch their whole lunch! As in nothing at all!

But with all of that said, we composted 5.44 pounds of compostable materials!  Then, I added the sawdust to keep any smell from developing.

Our first pile added to the compost! 

Next up, I put the buckets next to my car to clean out and bring in more saw dust to start the whole process over again on Wednesday next week!

Our compost buckets ready to be washed! 

Overall, the process went well. The student compost volunteers did such a great job of telling the other students what can be composted, and the cafeteria staff have been so kind to allow us to come into their space and start something new!

It is awesome to see kids get so excited about composting and reducing their waste! We definitely need to teach them young! 🌎💚♻️

Greening up the school!

This has been a pretty great week at school! In case you are just stopping by, I am a third grade teacher and teach all of the regular curriculum and squeeze in Earth friendly lessons along the way.

Last year we were able to start a cereal bowl recycling program and recycled a grand total of around 500. More teachers have jumped on board and now we are recycling more!

So far 446! (Since August!)

We have had a paper recycling program going on since I started teaching at the school that I teach at. However, last year we only had one out of many cans recycled due to contamination. So, this year we changed up the program, added more guidelines and it is going so much better! After sorting through it, I only had to pull out a few crayons, glue sticks and gross tissues.

Almost 90 pounds! 

Last year I started begging about wanting to do some composting at school. I was told no, but persisted. Then I started a neighborhood composting program with my son this summer to learn more and practice mixing the browns and greens. Then, revisited it with my principal and composting guru and now we will be having waste free Wednesdays with our grade level. I can not even tell you how happy my green heart is!

One of our new compost bins! 

Speaking of composting, we are up over 900 pounds here with our neighborhood program and have a goal of 1,000 pounds before we go on winter break. I hope that it happens!

Getting closer! 

And lastly, we finally had to take out the trash. This is only bag 4 for the whole year! We might just reach our goal!

Bag 4 for the year

So, pretty great progress this week! I have so many ideas that I want to do in the future! I love the feeling of hard work paying off and being given the chance to prove that I can do something! Here’s to teaching some 8 year olds how important this Earth is!