StarChild Science: Planting Daddy's Socks

CARMEL, CA, June 24, 2011 (Press-News.org) Suburban Hobby Farmer asked us what was the most important lesson children have learned in a garden in my classes. My answer comes from our walks through the forest, an empty lot, a patch of earth on a farm, a small tract of woodland while wearing a pair of Daddy's socks. At the end of these walks the children plant the socks into a flat full of potting soil and a magic journey full of promise and faith begins. From here on out every child who plants their daddy's socks after walking through a forest with the socks over their tennis shoes is intimately connected to any biology lesson you could give via flower anatomy, any literature lesson you could expose a child to via the mysteries in nature or the forces of good and evil, any mathematics lesson via handfuls of seeds, any green living ideas you may come up with via composting and fertilizing. All lessons in all areas of inquiry are squeezed or stuck into the fabric of a size 12 pair of socks.

As the children watch their gardens sprout out of their daddy's socks they begin to navigate a course between their own intimate connection to the new plants and the more general happenings with living things in a garden. This connection between intimacy and the more general events with living things leads to a very high degree of sustainability of "Daddy's sock garden". In fact, this high degree of sustainability can't be found in any other garden that doesn't germinate out of such an intimate thing as a pair of Daddy's socks.

It's this bottom-up investment the child is making that guarantees many generations of plants to be successful, season after season after season. The children care for each and every plant that germinates out of Daddy's socks; watch it like they watch the stars, water it as if they could hear the plant asking for water, feed it as if they just knew it was hungry, wipe off any beetles, aphids, white flies from the leaves as if they could hear the plant screaming for relief from the bites, the choked off apical buds, the voracious eating of larvae on the underside of its leaves. If they take their daddy's socks home with them or to their grandparents home and plant the socks there, the degree of sustainability of their garden is even greater than if they did not remove the socks from our garden in our lesson area. Some children even call their grandparents and agree on a delivery date for the socks to arrive. This may be only 50 miles away or 1000 miles away. We're talking Daddy's socks here!

Through the years of teaching, I have learned that this magic journey full of promise and faith is greater than any globe's circumference, any planet's orbit. It goes on and on and on. Having Daddy involved in a child's garden from the very beginning gives a child a strong sense of belonging, a well grounded sense of leadership, and a genuine sense of community. If you and a child are fortunate enough to plant a garden with his daddy's socks you will find that the questions the child asks are far more important than the answers that you have. Daddy's socks seem to bring out the soul of the child.

StarChild Science's website has recently expanded five times overnight with timely science education articles. This innovative science site provides hands-on science experiences for children and teachers that will change the way our children perceive their future.

Website: http://www.starchildscience.org