Kaleidoscope Preschool Pollinator Garden

A colorful little crew at the garden today!

June highlights in the garden!

Settlement Music School Kaleidoscope PK, Germantown: Teacher Alex (photographed here with very cool shirt) sent over this awesome pic of PS6 & 7’s strawberry haul! 🍓 They’re looking ruby red and delicious 😋 Happy harvesting! Berries purchased from Philly’s own

May flower inventory in the garden, in order of appearance: lanceleaf coreopsis 🌼 foxglove beardtongue 🤍 cosmos 🏵️ blackeyed Susan 🌻 orange coneflower 🧡the beginnings of Cardinal flower ❤️ Can’t wait to see what June brings!

Penstemon digitalis is blooming in the garden! This native plant is also known by its common name: Foxglove Beardtongue - what a name! “Beard tongue” comes from the fact that the stamen (tongue) inside this flower has a tuft of small hairs (beard). This is a pollinator-friendly perennial in the plantain family that can grow up to 5 feet tall. Its tubular flowers attract butterflies, hummingbirds, and long-tongued bees such as honeybees, bumblebees, Miner bees, and Mason bees. It’s included in the Monarch Munchables set through 💚

PS5 went on a beautiful walking trip to the Southwark/Queen Village Community Garden today! Mr. John and Ms. Michele taught us so much and were very patient with our questions and excitement over bees, birds, and a visiting cat. Photos:

1. Walking through the garden paths with Mr. John
2. So many garden plots and irises!
3. Smelling the mint
4. Ms. Michele telling us about the pollinator garden
5. Mr. John describing poppy flowers
6. More garden plots
7. Garden sign and view from Christian street
8. Reading Green, Green: A Community Garden Story by Marie & Baldev Lamba
9-10. Our butterfly craft! 🦋

🌼Flower highlight🌼: Lanceleaf Coreopsis (coreopsis lanceolata) is blooming in the garden! This flower is in the Asteraceae family, which also includes daisies and sunflowers. It is sometimes called Tickseed coreopsis because its seeds can resemble ticks. At least 22 native bee species rely on plants in the Coreopsis genus, and native bees are our most productive pollinators! 🐝

Our best *buds* at Kaleidoscope’s Germantown branch had an exciting day in the garden. They have 3 new raised beds on campus and today we started a strawberry patch in one! 🍓 Next the plan is to add some pollinator flowers in the center of this same bed. 🌼 PS6 & PS7 are growing some herbs and peas that will go in the second bed, 🫛and an aromatic herb garden is the plan for the third. 👃 Grow, little gardeners, grow!

Very excited about first blooms of the season! 😍🤗
🌼Lance leaf coreopsis🌼

The students of PS5 were so focused during our lesson about gardens yesterday! We learned about pollinators, read “The Thing About Bees” by Shabazz Larkin, and visited the garden. Students especially loved the wild onions and surprise grape hyacinths. 😄 Thank you, Ms. Dana, Ms. Gail, and Ms. Kim!

The Kaleidoscope kids are back to school today and our garden is fast asleep for the winter. But we’re loving this little blue flower a mystery friend “planted” in the meantime 😄💙

Who could have the Monday Blues after seeing our FIRST Smooth Blue Aster and Great Blue Lobelia blooms! 😍💙 It may be freezing but these beauties don’t mind 🤗