Egg-Shell Gardens in the Second Grade 



Reba Thompson 



Wilmington, Delaware 



During the fall and winter much was said about seed babies and 

 seed houses. The children gathered and brought to school as 

 many different kinds as they could find. We talked about how 

 Mother Nature nourished and cared for her little seed babies in 

 their little cradles, and how, when it was time for them to find a 

 new place to grow, she called all her willing helpers together 

 to help her find a nice warm, place for them, to spend the cold winter 

 until it would be time for them to grow. We learned that inside 

 of all of these seeds there slept little baby plants and that just 

 like all other babies, in order to grow these little babies must 

 have som.ething to eat and something to keep them. warm. We 

 wanted to watch some of these little babies grow, so we put the 

 seeds in a nice warm place until spring. 



We decided the best way to watch the seeds would betohavea 

 garden in our room where we could watch them most of the time. 

 On account of there being so many of us, we needed to have small 

 gardens, so we decided to plant our gardens in egg shells. 



Nearly every child wanted a garden all of his own, so he brought 

 his own egg-shell from home — many of them, brought as many as 

 eight shells. We devoted a part of one afternoon to the planting 

 and arranging of our gardens. We were going to put the egg-shells 

 on the sandtable, so we filled the table with sand and moved it 

 near a sunny window. We first punched a tiny hole in the bottom 

 of our shells for drainage, and then put in the soil and carefully 

 planted our seeds. After planting, each child gave his garden a 

 good drink and placed it on the sandtable. 



If children were ever interested in nature-study, they were 

 certainly m.ore than interested in the gardens. The first they thought 

 about in the morning when they came into the room was their gar- 

 dens. They wanted to see what had developed during the night. 

 They watched them all day and cared for them as they would a 

 very dear pet. 



The gardens furnished numerous and interesting talks. Not 

 only were they interesting for nature-study, but quite a few 



89 



