Almost 300 Polk Central students, ranging in age from 3-12, kept a trio of their classmates busy during the school’s annual Day of Discovery.
Unity Seed Youth Group members Andre Staley and Kaleb McEntire, along with Alex Duran-Torres, manned the Herb Garden station.
The boys explained how they grew the herbs and many vegetables at The Seed, Sun & Scenic Herb Garden in Pea Ridge this summer during Unity in the Community’s Summer Enrichment Camp. They shared their favorite herbs to eat (dill) and smell (lemon balm and mint), the special uses of certain herbs (lemon thyme as an antidote to skin irritation) and quizzed classmates about whether they could name the long, skinny, green “vegetable” (not a cucumber) that grew on a vine. Most students were unfamiliar with the loofah.
McEntire did a great marketing pitch for the homemade salve, saying that it “helps soothe bee stings and bug bites.”
The goal of the 2019 Day of Discovery was to teach students about healthy foods, and the boys certainly did that, impressing their classmates with their knowledge and enthusiasm for growing food. At the end of the day, Staley said that it was “fun and satisfying” to teach kids what the herbs were and how to grow them.
