The fascinating world of the Orca K-8 school garden!

Jeff’s 6th grade Math/Science class are becoming food scientists who will be able to read those mysterious and cryptic Nutrition Facts on the side of food products. This important life skill probably needs to be learned by adults also- can you decipher nutrition facts? Food labels are notoriously confusing and purposely misleading. This Food unit lets us explore food chemistry, packaged food, marketing, and general nefarious intentions from giant agri-business companies seeking to sell sell sell us junk food. This is a matter of life or death for a generation on the brink of losing connections to “real” food.

Pre-K finally got a chance to come out and visit the newly hatched salmon eggs. They even got to walk with their very own salmon cutout to remember this fun visit. They were very excited about seeing the baby salmon slither around on the bottom of the tank.

The salmon have popped out of their eggs sacks and become alevin! The excitement is thick in the air here! Students celebrated by cutting out a salmon outline and filling the back of the paper with as many vocabulary words that they could think of related to salmon. This increases their knowledge base about salmon and maybe even helps them conversate with their family about them. Getting kindergarteners and first graders excited about writing is always fun. stay tuned for more salmon updates as they continue to hatch and slither around at the bottom of the tank.

We were really digging into understanding those mysterious food labels on the side of packaged food today. It was great till the Spam got dropped (and boy does it smell). But seriously- these students are really delving into this project with a lot of enthusiasm. This isn’t about telling students to not eat this or not eat that- it’s about making educated choices for yourself. See the last food investigation blog post for the questions that we posed to students.

Thanks to Stacy (our fabulous art teacher) for the coat hangers that have vastly improved both the functionality & the artistic merit of our salmon mobiles. They work and look amazing…..