Enjoying the fruits of our labor

WE HAVE A SQUASH!! And it's gorgeous!!

For those of my followers who were wondering if our school garden would ever "sprout", boy did it ever!! Of the original seeds planted, from my students last year, only the corn survived replanting. The other plants in the garden were planted during our Reads & Seeds summer reading program.

Currently, we have squash, pumpkin, corn, tomatoes, and peppers planted. On the other side of the barn there are 2 planter boxes that are just waiting to be filled with our fall crops. (I'm thinking spinach or cabbage).

At any rate, my students and I have checked on our plants everyday when we go out to recess. Imagine our happiness when we found a perfect squash just waiting to be picked! I told the kids to expect a taste testing the next day.

I went out and bought some squash so we'd have enough for everyone to have some, as well as some for research purposes. For those of you who don't think there's a difference between store bought and "home grown", check out this pic.

The bigger one is the one we grew. I bought 4 squash total. Here are the others next to ours.

Pretty sad actually. I showed my students ours and one of the store bought. I asked them if they could tell which one came from our garden. The class was split between those who thought the smaller one was ours (cause it looked "dirty" like it might have come from a garden), and those who though the bigger one was ours (cause it looked pretty big when we saw it yesterday).

I had chopped up the other squash and gave each student a piece to hold and inspect. We've been working on adjectives in our writing, so we used our 5 senses to describe the squash. We created a chart of our words. The "taste" and "hear- sounds like" sections were filled in after our tasting. We read the book The Ugly Vegetables before making the chart, hence the title. :)

Here's the squash chopped up and ready for tasting. We all found it a little sad when we cut our perfect squash. :(

Everyone had to try it. No exceptions. I told my students to be quiet while eating so they could hear how the squash sounded when chewed. They were as quiet as they could be. :)

Some of my kids really dug into the squash, while others just pretended. However, when I pulled out some salad dressing, everyone decided that squash was the best veggie ever and asked for more.

 I think our first tasting from our garden was a success! My students can't wait until more veggies start to sprout. Everyone has their eye on the corn, but I'm not sure how to tell when corn is "done". Guess I'll have to Google it.

We'll keep everyone posted!