“”LA CROSSE, Wis., (January 31, 2022) – Students in Mariah Bigelow’s class at Coulee Montessori are using their green thumbs, creativity, and business savvy as they work to add new swings to the school’s playground.
Bigelow’s classroom currently houses about 150 house plants. Students have been planting, propagating, and caring for the plants with a goal of having up to 400 house plants ready to sell at the school’s first community plant sale in May. Proceeds from the plant sale will help fund new playground swings at the school. In the coming weeks, students will also plant vegetables from seeds to add to their stock. The skills needed to make the project successful come in large part from knowledge gained during the class’ botany unit.
The botany unit gives students scientific insight into how particular plants have different light, water, and space needs. Life-long skills of self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship will also be strengthened as the class learns about supply and demand, operating expenses, and profit.
“Different students will take away different things from this experience as we get closer to the sale,” said Coulee Montessori teacher Mariah Bigelow. “I want students to gain an appreciation for plants and our environment by finding joy in working in the dirt, creating more with their hands, and gaining a sense of responsibility by caring for a living thing. Our students will also come to understand the amount of hard work it takes to be an entrepreneur, and how anyone can start up a business if they have the right mindset and a good business plan.”
Students in the class also gain a sense of belonging in a community by using their individual strengths to contribute to the many different aspects of the project and build pride by putting in long, hard work to do something for the benefit of all the students at their school.
“We’re learning about how to take care of plants, about business, we’re learning how to manage a business. We’re learning so much,” said Coulee Montessori fifth-grader Wren Saunders-Scott. “We want to do this to contribute to getting swings. Because swings are fun, and we don’t have them, and a lot of kids want them so we’re working hard on the plant sale to raise the money. It’s all about learning and challenge.”
Work for the plant sale will continue this semester as the class makes plant hangers and cares for the inventory of plants. Through Montessori Practical Life Lessons, students learn how to make knots and work with cord as they learn basic macrame.
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