April 13, 2011
Garden in Elementry
Our project...
The community garden that we are proposing will better the Kamehameha students who don’t appreciate our Hawaiian heritage and the land’s natural resources. We are planning to create a community garden in the elementary school. Even though we are not helping the high schoolers, we hope this will impact the children while they’re young, into appreciating and perpetuating sustainability throughout the rest of their lives.
The people that can benefit from this project are primarily the elementary students and the teachers. The students and teachers will gain a new understanding and appreciation for the land and all it has to offer. Our plan is to teach the children in elementary at a young age to learn to grow plants, cultivate the land, and be resourceful. We can all benefit from this because we are teaching the new generation to be less dependent on store bought food and more dependable on home grown products. Our Proposed Solution...
This solution is unique because Kamehameha Schools was made for the Hawaiians, to live the Hawaiian culture, and by creating this garden we are practicing the arts of our ancestors. Also when harvest comes around we are able to enjoy the food our ancestors ate. This also shows the pride that we take in our school. I dont know any other school that has done anything like this. First off this solution is good because we donʻt need to use the $100. We can still solve the problem at hand without dipping into our budget. It also allows students to practice the Hawaiian Culture. Our native culture needs help, we need to perpetuate it and by creating a garden for native plants we are doing just that. This will teach students responsibility, a side from gardening skills, and gives them a chance to give back to the Hawaiian culture and our ʻaina. Over all this solution is good because for one it reverts the students back to practicing old Hawaiian culture and ways. It also gives students more responsibility in the school community where they have a sense of making a change.
Our proposal will be one that needs ongoing maintenance and will go on until maintenance ends. Ongoing maintenance is needed because plants need attention in order for it to grow. We propose to create a group of student and teacher volunteers who are willing to come to the garden on their free time to care for the plants. We will need people to come to create the garden, plant the seeds, water and maintain the plants, and harvest. We hope that our garden will be able to go on for many years because of maintenance for many years after we start this project.
Our solution is very practical because it makes use of the school’s open space to teach students how to be more sustainable. Within a month, we can at least clear land and begin growing plants. The main purpose is to begin to teach people who to grow their own native Hawaiian garden. The only thing that could take a while is getting permission to clear out land for our project.
For the construction of this project our tools necessarily don’t have to be special. Just maybe tools for planting just to make the work a little more easier. I learned from Hawaiian teachers that things like planting plants or making food or doing a chant or a song, you always need to have your mind cleared or bring good thoughts to the work that your presenting or doing. For this case, if we as a group go into this project with good thoughts then the plants will grow and so will the knowledge of the people who are associated with the garden we are planning to build.
The approximate cost for this project would actually be $100 because we will need to provide planting tools and seeds.We will be creating a garden in the elementary. Our contact person is Debbie Uwaine.
Physics:Our project is related to physics because when we plant and cultivate more vegetables we will depend on out-of-state shipped produce more. This is important because we the less fossil fuels and energy we used to transport produce from the mainland to Hawaii, the better. Being dependent on out side resources makes Hawaii have a lot of potential to create a way to sustain our own island. Therefore, there is potential energy in Hawaii’s local produce market. The type of procedure used to ship the produce from the mainland to Hawaii falls under the category of kinetic energy. When we learn to plant our own produce, eventually will become a self-dependent state. Instead of relying on shipments of food to the islands, we can be self-dependent and sustainable. In the long run, we hope to teach people how to change their potential energy into kinetic energy so they can become more sustainable.
We will also use the scientific method to create our garden. The question we asked was what can we do. Our answer was to create a garden in order to teach the children how to take care of their own garden so they can learn how to be more sustainable. We have done background research and found out what we need and how we can create a garden. Our hypothesis is we think if we create a garden for the children, the children will allow it to live on. In the following weeks we will create the garden and find out if the children will let it live on. After doing this we will then analyze our data and create our final paper.
Revised 4/26/11
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