Gardening at SAR Academy

“Does anyone know what a daffodil is?” asked Corinne Flax, a senior educator from Wave Hill, as she sat in a circle of first-grade students at the Salanter Akiba Riverdale (SAR) Academy on Monday.

“I do! I had one in my garden last year,” said 6-year-old Sara Back, who explained that she and her grandmother planted flowers together last year.

Sara’s gardening experience will come in handy at the end of October, when students in Hillary Edelson and Lisi Mandel’s class plant a garden of daffodils outside SAR Academy, as part of the school’s enrichment programming for students.

But before they plant the bulbs, Ms. Flax made sure the class understood the science behind flower planting.

“What’s the difference between these two bulbs?” she asked the class, holding up an onion bulb and a light bulb.

“One uses electricity; one doesn’t,” one student noted.

After a lively discussion, Ms. Flax passed out sealed plastic bags, each containing two onion halves, to the excitement of some students and the disgust of others who were averse to onions.

Though some students worried the onions would make them cry, there were no tears shed as students got a chance to compare the real onions to drawings of a cross section of an onion, with onion parts like the “immature flower,” “basal plate” and “roots” labeled.

“I found the roots!” Sara exclaimed.

“You can see where the immature flowers come from,” noted 6-year-old Ben Rosenblum.

Ms. Mandel said the experiences gave students a chance to engage in hands-on scientific learning while contributing to the community.

“It’s going to be our gift to the school to plant a garden,” she said.