Is broccoli a mammal?

by Lorie Hammond, Ph. D., Academic Director

Last month I wrote in the newsletter about how kids learn through play. A similar piece could be written hundreds of times over about the many ways kids learn from our various experiences, such as the garden, especially when they experience these in dialogue with a group of kids and adults. This little story happened when we held our primaria “circle time” in the garden. We all stood looking at our lovely crop of broccoli, a miniature broccoli forest!

Isabella: Is broccoli a mammal, like we are?

Lorie: What do you think? How can we tell?

Jackie: It doesn’t breathe, so it can’t be a mammal.

Lorie: Is that true? Do plants breathe?

Alex: they breathe the opposite way than us. They give off air.

Balen: It doesn’t make an egg, so it can’t be a mammal.

Lorie: Do mammals make eggs? What do plants make to reproduce? We have grown plants before.

Alex: Plants make seeds. (Everyone agrees)

Lorie: What can we do that broccoli can’t do? Isabella just raised her hand. Can broccoli move like she moves?

Sammy: (Pushing the broccoli, which sways easily) Look! It can move.

Lorie: But can it move by itself?

Kids: No. It can’t move.

Lorie: That’s one of the differences between plants and animals. We will learn more about that later. Today we are going to pick broccoli by breaking off its flowers. We aren’t going to pick the whole plant, like big farms would do. What do you think will happen if we leave the plants?

Several kids: they will grow more broccolis.

Sammy: that’s called regeneration!

Juliana: that’s just like a lizard, which grows a new tail. And a lizard can grow a new skin too!

I find this conversation fascinating, because one can easily see the pieces of information that kids are gathering. They know a lot, yet fitting it together takes a long time. But it is through dialogues like this that kids develop a sense of how the world works, and equally importantly, that teachers come to understand how kids think. Have you ever wondered if broccoli is a mammal?