YAAS: Earth Day Seed Bombs

If you want to learn about the original conception and mission of this program, read my What is YAAS? post. TL;DR: It's a weekly group for youth age 14-24 where we'll be doing community service work, library programs, hosting guest presenters, and making connections with peers in a safe and welcoming environment.

April means, among other things, Earth Day! I couldn't think of anyone better to teach YAAS about environmentalism than my best friend, Anna. You might remember her from March's Artist Trading Card program...she was back wearing her gardener hat tonight!

At Anna's request, I made a quick PowerPoint showing all the seeds she brought with her and what they'll look like when fully grown. 

Our group also took an in-building field trip to the library's Seed Library, where patrons can "check out" seeds and take them home to plant. I put "check out" in quotes because you're obviously not bringing the seeds back after they're planted. HOWEVER, the seed library also has a spot for donation. After a patron's plants grow up, the idea is that they would harvest seeds from that plant and donate them back to the library. So in a way, you do turn them back in. 

Instead of just learning about the plants and having the kids take some home to plant, we did a cool gross messy awesome project with compost and clay! If you've never heard of seed bombs, here's short video introducing the concept.

The ones in the video are the size of a golf ball, and most of ours were about the size of baseballs, but they'll still work. Look how much fun everyone had!

 

Anna + plants = true love

Group hand moisturizing

I am notoriously anti-dirt... and they got me