Growing Healthy and Caring Hearts

As an extension of their science and health curriculums, grade four students will grow lettuce bowls from seed. Students will be responsible for monitoring and measuring plant growth throughout the process. At the end of the project students will use half of the lettuce bowls to create a salad to share with the rest of the school community. The other half of the bowls will be sold to families in our school community with all of the proceeds being donated to the Edmonton Food Bank to assist them in serving almost 20, 000 people each month. As a conclusion to this project students will produce a video that shares the how we have grown not only lettuce, but also healthy and caring hearts as a strong community of learners.

Update (April 6, 2017)

On a beautiful April afternoon students were excited to get outside and plant the seeds that will eventually grow into lettuce bowls and our initiative for social justice. We are checking on our bowls every day and hope to see some small sprouts within the next week.

Update (April 18, 2017)

Students returned to school from the Easter long weekend excited to see that the lettuce had sprouted!

Ella: "They had grown so much in a little time!"
Theo: "It was amazing how much the plants had grown in a week."
Oliver: "They started growing."
Maya: "I was surprised because they grew a lot more than I thought."
Allison: "There were so many sprouting!"
Chelsea: "It is amazing how big they have grown."
Katherine: "Watching plants grow is so amazing."

Over the next few weeks we will make sure to water our new lettuce plants and give them lots of light in our greenhouse. We will check on how they are doing every day. We hope they will keep growing!

Update (May 25, 2017)

Students spent some time researching Edmonton's Food Bank and were surprised to learn that approximately 40% of the people who are served are under the age of 18. We came up with a letter explaining the project to our families and our desire to raise money for the food bank through the sale of our lettuce bowls. Students are excited to continue growing at home while supporting an important community organization.

Update (May 31, 2017)

As a wrap up for our "Growing Healthy and Caring Hearts" project we took a group photo this afternoon with our lettuce bowls. We are excited to be able to donate $220.00 to Edmonton's Food Bank. Here are some of our thoughts about the project:

"I enjoyed watching the lettuce go from tiny seeds in the dirt to lettuce plants!"

"I liked the process we had to do to successfully make the lettuce grow. It was a lot more work than I thought it was going to be!"

"I think it was really fun to grow the plants and learn about them."

"I think it's really nice that we're donating to Edmonton's Food Bank because a lot of people don't have the right amount of food and they need food."

"It was great to see them grow from little tiny seeds all the way to big lettuce. I think it's a really good thing that the money we raised isn't going to ourselves, but to a good purpose."

"It is really good that the money goes to help people who don't have enough money to buy food."

"I think the lettuce looks beautiful now and we are donating to a great cause."