On September 7th, 2017, we had a guest speaker come and tell us about succulents. We learned about different kinds, how to grow them, how to plant them, what tools are used to grow them, and more. Our eighth graders passed around and studied different succulents while the speaker explained a little bit about each one. The students showed great interest in these kinds of plants and had multiple questions. All of which, the guest speaker answered in detail so that everyone understood. We were taught about different ways to grow them to where they would turn different colors or grow to certain sizes.
On September 6th, 2017, we continued our work from the previous day. We split into two groups. Group 1 went up to the green house and put gardening boxes together. Meanwhile, Group 2 was planting in cartons and large pots. Halfway though the class period, we switched and continued where the previous groups had ended.
On September 1st, 2017, we went outside and started prepping to plant fruits and vegetables. We sat at our usual out door tables and filled cartons of dirt mixtures. When we finished filling them, we labeled what we were going to put in them.
On August 31st, 2017, we took our first horticulture test. The test was taken on Google Classroom, and went over everything we have learned so far this year.
On August 30th, 2017, we discovered different types of soil by feel. We split into teams of three, and each person got a Zip-lock bag. We put sugar in the first bag to represent sand. We put flour in the second to represent silt. And we put a mixture of water and flour to create a doughy substance in the third to represent clay. Each person in the teams felt the bags and then we had a competition. In this competition, students lined up with there teams, felt the "soil" bags, and tried to guess the soil without looking at the bag. Whichever team guessed correctly first won. Toward the end of our 6th Period class, our principal, Mr. Goswick, guessed the soils too.
On August 29th, 2017, our eighth graders learned about the amount of water soil can hold. Our teachers demonstrated this by wetting a paper towel. When the towel was dripping wet, it demonstrated soil saturation. Once it had stopped dripping, but we could still squeeze some water out of it, the towel was then representing soil capacity. We later learned that we want our soil to be at soil capacity when we grow most plants. This way, our plants won't get over watered, but they also won't wilt or wither from lack of water. When we could no longer squeeze water out of the towels, they had reached wilting point. this is when the plants can no longer get water out of the soil and start to wilt.
On August 28th, 2017, we did an activity that taught us what soils hold water better, and what soil combinations would be best to grow plants in. The three soils were silt, sand, and clay. In this activity, we used objects that represented these soils. Sand was big rocks, silt was medium sized rocks, and clay was pebbles. We filtered water through each of these by cutting a two liter bottle of soda horizontally, putting a cup at the bottom of the lower part of the bottle, tying a coffee filter to the lip of the bottle, and turning the lid upside down so that the cup was under the hole and the hole looked like a funnel. In the first part of the project, we split into nine groups and each group was assigned one of the three "soils". We put our "soils" in the funnel, and poured water on them. The groups with "sand" (big rocks) filtered all of their water first. Then the groups with "silt" (medium rocks). Then the groups with "clay" (pebbles) finished. This showed us that the bigger the particles are, the less water it would hold. After that, we combined into three groups and had a competition. The competition was to see which group could put together a "soil" combination that would not filter the water too slow or too fast. The goal was to come in second place. This activity gave us an idea about the type of soil combination that our plants would most-benefit from.
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On May 17,2017 we learned two lessons. The first lesson we soaked pinto beans and dissected them to learn the different parts. Our next lesson came from the book, Project Learning Tree, where we learned about the different parts of a tree. We did an activity where the students acted as the layers of a tree with every group of students acting as a different layer. By doing these activities we now have a better understanding of the way plants work. We also finished our greenhouse and built the potato boxes.
 
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