Mattituck Cutchogue School District

Elementary students create video to showcase garden project

Third grade teacher Sarah Maine and two students — third-grader Helen Schultz and fifth-grader Haylie Dickerson — gave a presentation about the Cutchogue East Elementary School’s growing garden program.

Starting at the kindergarten level, kids learn about composting, quality soil and different seed types. As students progress through the grades they learn about insects in the garden and the interdependent relationship between the animals and plants they feed off of, Ms. Maine said at Thursday’s Board of Education meeting.

The children are also responsible for understanding the math involved in the measurements and other aspects of gardening, she said of the elementary garden program, which is modeled off what the high school students are doing.

Helen spoke about what she and her fellow third graders were learning, which focused on the beneficial insects they find in the school garden.

Haylie informed the board of what fifth graders are doing specifically and spoke more about the Carton 2 Garden project. Here, students repurpose juice and milk cartons to use for planting seeds.

Cutchogue-East students created a video explaining their project, shown at Thursday’s meeting, and submitted it to Carton 2 Garden in the hopes of winning $5,000 worth of grant money for the school. Winners are announced in mid-May, Ms. Maine said.

The high school recently applied for a Seeds of Change grant in the hopes of winning either $10,000 or $27,500 for their high school agricultural program. Results have yet to be released.

Photo credit: Cutchogue East Elementary School

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