District 93 students growing both plants and relationships

Sometimes you plant seedlings to watch flowers or vegetables grow.

And sometimes you plant seedlings to watch children grow.

There was a little of both going on Thursday when eighth-graders from Stratford Middle School in Bloomingdale spent part of their day helping preschool students at Carol Stream Elementary District 93's Early Childhood Center slip tiny plants into the soft dirt of three large raised garden beds.

The premise was to have the older kids help the younger ones plant cherry tomatoes, lima beans, carrots, snap peas, spinach, pumpkins and even sunflowers in the new community garden outside the ECC. The preschoolers had started most of the plants from seeds they planted earlier this year in paper cups.

But there was much more to it than just that, preschool Principal Kim Hefner said.

Because if you looked beyond the colorful gardening tools and the occasional dirt-smudged face, you saw it also was a chance to build relationships among students of different ages. It was a chance to give even the youngest kids some lessons in math and science. And somewhere down the road, it will be a chance to give the youngsters a taste of some healthy snack options they've grown themselves.

"It was a great, authentic learning experience," Hefner said.

Plans for creating the community garden at the Early Childhood Center at 280 Old Gary Ave. in Bloomingdale began taking root even before it opened last fall.

"It was so easy to embrace the topic," Hefner said. "It's so important for kids to be able to see how plants grow … and that things grow and change."

"Many preschool students think milk comes from a carton and corn comes from the grocery store," she said in an earlier news release, "but this will help them understand more about how nature works and teach them some important environmental lessons."

Beyond the project's educational value, she said, was the opportunity to bring more than 100 eighth-graders to the preschool and give them the opportunity to interact with roughly 170 much younger children.

"It was amazing," Hefner said. "It was better than I could have imagined."

Ask almost anyone who deals with middle schoolers on a regular basis and they'll tell you it's a tricky age when kids tend to partake in a certain amount of posturing, of putting on a show and face for their peers.

But both Hefner and District 93 Community Relations Coordinator Ryan McPherrin said they were impressed by the attitudes and approaches the eighth-graders took with their new young friends.

"All their defenses were down," Hefner said. "The kids really engaged with each other. It made me realize, yeah, we're growing plants, but we're also growing relationships."

It will take a while, of course, for the preschoolers to fully see the fruits of their labors. It's possible some of the plants - maybe the spinach - will really start looking like something before the end of school, but most of the others will slowly emerge over the summer.

With that in mind, organizers will ask families of both preschoolers and middle schoolers to volunteer to keep an eye on the garden plots for a week at a time during summer break.

The families will be asked to measure rainfall at the site and weigh any of the harvest that ripens during their week. They also will be invited to take any of the veggies home for their own use or to donate them to area food pantries.

By the start of school next fall, Hefner said the preschoolers will be able to see how much their plants have grown and get the chance to do some harvesting - and tasting - themselves.

"We hope this will get them interested in growing and eating their own snacks and help them build healthy food choices," she said.

When the growing season ends, Hefner said, she plans to invite sixth-graders from Stratford to the ECC to help turn over the soil and get the beds ready for winter.

If all goes well, she said, the two schools then will restart the whole process again next spring.

"We want to capitalize on our relationship-building capabilities," Hefner said. And to see those relationships, the program itself, and of course all those veggies, continue to grow.