A Bloomin' Union

Tulip-Planting Becomes a Far-Flung Learning Project

What can connect a class of Silver Spring fourth-graders with students at 11,000 schools around the country?

Your first answer might be "the Internet." And you would be partly right. The other part of the answer is "tulip bulbs."

Sherie Bauman's fourth-graders at Calvary Lutheran School signed up for a tulip-planting project through a Web site called Journey North.

All the kids had to do was plant some tulip bulbs in their schoolyard.

The kids could have just buried bulbs and forgotten about them until the spring. But science projects are more fun the more digging you do.

First, the kids set out for Roozen's Garden Center, a block from their school, to buy their bulbs and find out more about tulips. Store manager Mike West was able to answer Sammy Koleosho's question about where tulips come from. Wild tulips first grew in Asia, not Holland, where most people think they started, he said.

Back in the classroom, the fourth-graders got busy weighing, measuring and sketching their bulbs. When their teacher cut a bulb in half, they were amazed to see that it had rings like an onion. What did the kids think they smelled like? Like salty water or decaying leaves, or even like grapes. But according to Jeremiah Chuang, 9, his bulb smelled "faintly ominous."

The kids were soon ready to plant. The Journey North Web site had lots of good tips. "Uh-oh," said Sammy, 8. "If we plant them close to the school, they might get warmed up from the building. Then they'll bloom earlier than they should."

"Look, we're supposed to plant them exactly seven inches deep," 8-year-old Kaitlyn Tummer read. They dug in a spot where kids aren't allowed to play. Next, they charted where each tulip was planted. That will help them test their idea that the biggest bulbs grew into the biggest tulips.

Finally, they put wire fencing just under the soil to "keep pesky squirrels from digging them up," Kaitlyn explained.

The students reported their planting to the Web site, and a brown box appeared next to their school on the Journey North map -- indicating they had planted bulbs.

The fourth-graders will be busy even though the bulbs won't bloom until spring. "We're going to check the soil and air temperatures every week. When they start to warm up after winter, we'll know our tulip bulbs are starting to grow underground," Bauman said.

-- Claire Miller