Starlight Elementary Life Lab Unveils New Chicken Coop – Santa Cruz Sentinel
Starlight Elementary Life Lab Unveils New Chicken Coop – Santa Cruz Sentinel
By NICK SESTANOVICH | nsestanovich@santacruzsentinel.com
PUBLISHED: May 1, 2024 at 3:48 p.m. | UPDATED: May 1, 2024 at 3:49 p.m.
Posted on at Santa Cruz Sentinel
WATSONVILLE — Already a hub for growing fruits and vegetables, Starlight Elementary School’s Life Lab has had a little more life in it in the past few weeks. Students have been raising seven chicks, and now those chicks have a permanent home.
The school hosted a ribbon cutting for the Life Lab garden’s new chicken coop Tuesday, providing a shelter for the school’s seven recently hatched chicks, or “Star Pollitos.” It was also a day to celebrate all aspects of the Life Lab program, from its garden to its kitchen.
Starlight’s Life Lab kitchen opened in 2022 through a grant from the Emeril Lagasse Foundation. The program features a garden where students can grow fruits and vegetables and a kitchen where they can incorporate them into recipes. The goals include promoting healthier eating, providing outdoor learning experiences and teaching students to be environmental stewards.
Life Lab is a program that dates to 1979 when it was established by then-Green Acres Elementary School teacher Ruth Antolini, who was in attendance at Tuesday’s event. She was assigned a classroom on the outskirts of campus near a rather vast outdoor space.
“I could see that my classroom was the perfect spot to start a garden and have the students work the garden,” she said.
After the program became popular, Antolini said the school’s administration suggested it receive assistance from UC Santa Cruz, which provided a greenhouse.
“The university was so impressed that they decided to adopt the program,” she said. “Since the university’s taken it over, it’s gone nationwide.”
In addition to programs throughout Santa Cruz County — including gardens at 13 Pajaro Valley Unified School District schools — Life Lab has also offered programs and workshops throughout the United States. Antolini said she is pleased with its growth.
“It worked out unbelievably with people interested,” she said. “The students, they loved it. It was like you could do all your lesson plans even with the garden involved. Thanks to the people at the university, now it’s gone through schools nationwide. It’s teaching science through gardening.”
The event was hosted in conjunction with Starlight’s Dia de Niños celebration, or Children’s Day, a Mexican holiday observed April 30 that celebrates children. The school’s blacktop and athletic field were transformed into a mini carnival featuring inflatable axe throwing and basketball stations, lawn games like cornhole and a large Connect 4 grid, a taco truck by Tacos el Jerry, snow cones, popcorn, face painting, a book giveaway and a bike with a blender attached where kids could pedal and make smoothies.
Principal Jackie Medina said it was appropriate to be hosting both events simultaneously.
“It’s a perfect day to have a carnival and invite everybody back to the garden,” she said.
The garden has many amenities, including fruit trees, a row garden for crops like broccoli, a greenhouse that propagates plants for all district schools, a reading nook with a Little Free Library, a berry garden and a water catchment system to collect and reuse rainwater. Other planned features include a native plant garden and a human sundial, with mosaics painted on pavers with numbers that will allow students to tell time when certain shadows are cast.
“Almost every day, it looks different,” said Medina. “It’s literally alive. Obviously, it’s growing and changing, but there’s so many new features.”
The newest feature is a chicken coop to house chicks raised by students. The chicks are 3 weeks old and hatched at the home of a nearby resident who raises chickens and donated them to the school. Fifth graders bestowed the chicks with the names Luna, Biggy Cheese, Chicken Little, CaseOh, Fluffy, Oreo and Mimi.
Medina said the chicks started out by living in her office and have spent the past week in Angela Tiger’s fifth grade class, already becoming a big hit with students.
“They hold them every morning right before lunch and right before the end of the day because we’re trying to get them accustomed to being more friendly with the kids,” she said.
Medina said some students are raising chickens of their own, so handling chicks comes naturally to them. The fifth grade classrooms will rotate through different responsibilities, and parents will volunteer to take care of them over the summer. As they get bigger, she said some students may even get to take them home over weekends.
The school will be raising the chicks through adulthood, and once they are able to lay eggs, those eggs will be used in Life Lab recipes.
“They all have colorful eggs,” said Medina. “They’ll be laying blue, green, yellow, white, brown, all the different-colored eggs, which will be really fun for the kids.”
The kids got to hold and pet the chicks after the ribbon cutting, and there were also different stations to sift through composting and prepare fresco de ensaladas. This popular Latin American drink consists of chopped and grated cantaloupes, pineapples, mangoes, watermelon, carrots and apples served over ice and seasoned with sweetener and Tajín. The recipe was provided by Liseth Rodriguez, Starlight parent and resident community chef, and culinary educator Noemi Romo likened it to a drinkable fruit cup.
Medina said the addition of the chicken coop adds another element to the Life Lab: compassion for other animals.
“This project has become such a hub for our community,” she said. “It just brings so much joy to our community and bringing people together in fun ways.”