This is the second story in a series about Edward Little High School teacher Kim Finnerty’s agriculture class. The first story was published Sept. 5.

AUBURN — During their chemistry class Thursday, Edward Little High School students took a field trip to Park Avenue Elementary School. There, the big kids taught the little kids about gardening.

“What’s your favorite fruit and vegetable?” Katie Laflamme, 17, asked a table of kindergarten students. One answered oranges. Another said grapes. Another, apples.

In a different classroom, Emily Ouellette, 16, held an iPad and asked youngsters to name the food on the screen. Five-year-olds identified strawberries, grapes, oranges and watermelon.

“We’re garden buddies,” said Aden Hassan, 18. “We’re here to teach the little kids about agriculture.”

Hassan and the other 16 high school students are in Kim Finnerty’s class learning chemistry through agriculture, made possible by a Maine Department of Agriculture grant.

This coming spring, the older students will work with the younger students to plant a garden at Park Avenue Elementary School.

“Today is an introduction,” Finnerty said. Students aren’t ready to plant, but they wanted to meet the younger students they’ll work with “to make it more personal. Now they’ll have a kid in mind when they’re learning.”

The high school students taught pupils in five K-2 classrooms. The older students planned the lesson, Finnerty said. It involved asking young students to identify their favorite fruits and vegetables by coloring them, discussions about fruits and vegetables, and an out-loud reading of “Max and the Little Plant,” a story about a boy helping his grandfather in the garden.

One objective was for the high school students to find out which fruits and vegetables the Park Avenue children like, Finnerty said. They will select some of those favorites to plant in the garden.

They’ll also research the chosen plants. “The chemistry piece for my students is about what is absorbed in the ground, into the vegetables and into the body.” They’ll probe what it takes to grow carrots compared to oranges, what it is about the northern climate that prohibits crops of oranges and pineapples.

Since Finnerty’s agriculture class began this fall, “it’s been amazing,” she said. “We’ve done a lot.”

Students have made numerous visits to the Auburn Land Lab and have worked with Bates College students testing the Park Avenue Elementary School soil to ensure there are no hazardous chemicals where they’ll plant.

They’ve worked with Lewiston Public Works crews as they dug up flower bulbs. “They harvest them every year. In the spring, they will teach us how to split the bulbs, because they multiply,” Finnerty said. “Then they plant them again.”

The high-schoolers will take a field trip to see the University of Maine’s agriculture program, and make several more visits to Park Avenue. Students will start seedlings in classrooms that will go into the garden. Peas will be planted after the April vacation and may be harvested before summer vacation begins, Finnerty said.

Kindergarten teacher Crystal Dube was delighted that older students would help younger students garden. Showing them how is better than telling them, Dube said. And to the youngsters, teens are like gods.

“My kids see high-schoolers right up on the pedestal,” Dube said. “It’s cool to let them know the big kids live in Auburn, and when (the younger children) grow up they can go to Edward Little, too.”

In a first-grade class, Jordan Lansley, 17, talked to students about the word photosynthesis. “Some of them already knew the word,” he said.

bwashuk@sunjournal.com

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