THUNDER BAY – An afternoon rain shower did little to dampen the enthusiasm of students young and old on Monday afternoon.
Teenagers from Superior Collegiate and Vocational Institute spent the day helping to install flower boxes at Five Mile Public School, aided by senior kindergarten student filled pint-sized wheelbarrows with potting soil to fill the planters.
Superior’s Chloe Kuchta said it’s a great project that brings together an elementary school with the high school most of its students will one day attend.
“And I think it’s great for the students here to see that we want to help the environment and create good gardening skills for young students and teach them how to do it,” Kuchta said.
“Also seeing how we built them and seeing that we care.”
His hood pulled over his head to shield the rain, six-year-old Colton Cannon was a busy little boy on Monday, almost too busy filling his wheelbarrow with soil to stop and talk.
“It’s really fun,” he said. “We’re putting soil in boxes. It’s for us to have flowers. It will look beautiful.”
Beth Kuiper, an outdoor instructor at the Kingfisher Outdoor Centre and member of the parents council at Five Mile, said the idea behind the project is to naturalize the kindergarten’s school yard, and came at the request of teachers at the Dawson Road school.
The flower boxes were built by students at Superior Collegiate and Kuiper said it’s a great experience for everyone involved.
“I feel like there is learning on lots of levels – the fundamentals of building a box like this in the classroom. But I think the main learning is the connection and positive relationships being established between the high school and one of the feeder schools, being Five Mile in this case,” Kuiper said.
“Also, the students having the boxes with the soil, I understand they’re going to be planting some veggies, and some flowers, so connecting with that growing process as well. I feel like there are so many levels of learning.”
