This week our CBL group made finishing touches and had some exciting things happen. We started working on our poster and video. The two are coming along nicely as they are both detailed, and took much work. Also, for the exciting news, both of the prototypes have begun to sprout and are flourishing quite nicely. This was very exciting for us as we knew our hard work had begun to pay off. We were satisfied to know that the gardens were doing well and that they were happy and healthy.
This week our project changed very much. We are not going to Echo Horizon anymore, instead we have decided to go to Big Sunday. Big Sunday is school community service project that Windward does every year. We went to Grand View Elementary. While the volunteers from Windward were painting the school we were teaching everyone about our product, hanging gardens. The people there seemed to be very intrigued by our product. When people came to our little stand, they made a pocket on the hanging garden and then entered a raffle to see if they could win the hanging garden. This raffle was a great idea and it got people hooked on the product at the end of the day we were able to crown two winners of two hanging gardens and had more than 20 entries.
This week our project has changed a lot. Before, we were planning on going to echo horizon and making box farms, but now our idea has changed a little bit. We are now going to be going to echo horizon and making these things that are called garden tiles. Garden tiles are seeds planted in a biodegradable pot with sphagnum moss to hold in moisture so they will stay hydrated for up to three days. We will be making these at echo horizon with the younger kids so that they learn how to make them, and eventually make their own at home. Decisions have been throughout the project by us keeping in contact, but sometimes one person has had to take the lead over the weekend, since we normally are very busy during the weekend and cannot meet up. We have contacted two people, and we would have contacted more, except the first person we contacted, echo horizon, got back to us almost immediately and we did not have to contact others schools. The second person we contacted has not responded, and that was a company to go to the schools with us to help us add the garden tiles to echo horizon.
We are three seventh graders working on our Challenged Based Learning project, or CBL project. We plan on making box gardens. We will be going to Echo Horizon school to teach the second and third graders how to plant their own fruits and vegetables. We are planning on giving the plants we made with Echo Horizon to go to the community garden near Echo, so that the younger kids at Echo learn how to make their own plants for the community and then they are able to eat their own plants. Our original idea was nowhere close to what we have now. We went through a lot of feedback from our classmates, teachers, and administrators. The feedback changed not only our idea but our view on the subject. Before, we believed that we were going to be going to poorer communities and giving the box gardens, but then with feedback, that going to schools would be better. This is because schools have lots of room to grow food and schools have lots of little kids, and if kids get into the habit of growing their own foods when they are young, then maybe when they are adults they will grow their own fresh not GMO food. Some GMOs help, but they will not have to put pesticides over the food or weed killers or change the genes of the plants to grow better. They will have fresh food that saves them money, and gives them a healthier lifestyle, since studies show that kids, when they grow their own food, tend to want to eat it more. I, being a kid, feel that when I grow my own food, that I want to eat it more.
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