In recent years, it has become the tradition for Old Farmers Road School Kindergartners to welcome the next group of children into our school by planting seeds in the gardens that will bloom in time to greet everyone back at the end of the summer. Each year, the Long Valley Garden Club hosts this Save the Seed experience for our Kindergartners. This allows for an ongoing learning cycle in which one group plants in the spring, for the next group to harvest in the fall. During the harvest, children save the seeds for planting again later that year when it is their turn to pass on the tradition. Through this process we nurture beauty, wonder, generosity, and discovery as the heart of our learning process.

This year, as children stepped off the bus to begin Kindergarten in August, giant sunflowers were waiting in the Old Farmers Road School Garden and the Kindergarten Outdoor Classroom Garden.

As we prepared to investigate the Next Generation Science Standards in Kindergarten, children, teachers, and Garden Club leaders set the stage together for what learning looks like in Kindergarten.