Podcast: Learning at Lely - Leader in Me Update

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Learning at Lely - Leader in Me Update

The Garden of Readin'

Lely Elementary School is a special place brimming with rock star teachers and talented students. Everyday, we see the kiddos at Lely do the right things: help other students, show kindness, display grace under pressure, and work hard toward their goals. Our amazing teachers plan some of the coolest learning activities for them that I have ever seen. There is always something awe-inspiring going on. 

One of my goals is to make the media center a hub of the school and nurture kids' love of reading. I want them to spend time there reading, looking for books, making, collaborating, listening, and learning. I know that an increase in student traffic is a good measure of how they perceive the media center. Do they like it? Do they want to spend time there? Do they come back? Do they avoid the place? I'm trying to remake the media center into one of the most kid-friendly elementary school libraries in the state of Florida. 

One of the things that we have been working on is transforming the space into a vibrant, colorful, interactive media center where kids always find something new. To that end, last weekend, we installed the Garden of Readin' right outside of our media center. This was an idea a few months in the making. We took an area outside that is adjacent to the media center and remade it into a colorful, interactive, peaceful place for kids to read, chill, learn, imagine, and wonder. This is the Garden of Readin' (scroll down for many more pics). 

In early August, I wrote two garden-themed grants on Donors Choose, one for the basic gardening items and the second for the decor items that would make this area magical. I enlisted the help of local artist Matt Park, who has been a great friend of Lely Elementary, to help make this vision a reality. He had many ideas that I had not even considered and that synergy was essential to this project. With all of the materials delivered, we took a couple of days over the long weekend and got to work. 

We cleared out the old plants that had been there for a long time, tilled the soil, added bags of topsoil and Black Kow, and got the area ready for planting. Having planned this garden out on paper, we then planted according to the drawings. After a few hours, we saw that this space was becoming what we had imagined.

A few hours into the second day of work, it was time to wrap things up. We placed the painted stones, attached Matt's signs, hung the wind chimes and spinners, and gave it one final look. Our garden idea had come to life. It was colorful, interactive, fun, and magical. We were incredibly pleased with how things turned out. We thought that the kids (and adults) were going to love it. No one really knew that we were going to do this project over the weekend. It was intended as a surprise. Was it ever!

One of the things that we planned for the garden was for each student at the school to choose their favorite color stone and use some paint markers to personalize the stone and place it back in the garden. We want all of our kids to be represented in our garden as they are in our school community. When classes came down for their read-alouds, they also painted stones. It was such a fun time and the kids seemed really excited. 

The kiddos had a blast making the stones their own. We have many more classes that still have to come down to make their stones, but we got about six classes finished in the last couple of days. Now when kids walk by the garden, they can point to their stone and know that they are an integral part of our garden, and our school. Since Lely Elementary is a Leader in Me School, the class adjacent to the garden has agreed to maintain and take care of the garden. That will probably happen one afternoon a week where the kiddos sweep, replace any stones that get moved, check for weather damage, and re-mulch when necessary. 

I have already heard about kiddos trying to match the fictional (or real) places on the sign with the books that go with them. Some are now trying to read them all. It is really fun to see how the kids interact with the garden and I'm looking forward to hearing more over the next few weeks. 

Now, it's time to find another area of campus that needs some sprucing up and get to work there. I have a couple in mind already so keep an eye on this space to see what happens on campus in the next few months. For now, enjoy the pictures as you scroll down.