How Terrariums work as self-managing gardens and represents the Water Cycle in nature but in a sealed glass jar.

                                               Our class Terrarium or self-managing garden

Our class terrarium represents a mini Water Cycle in Nature in a closed system. The terrarium is a self-managing or self -sustaining garden.

We drew a plan of what we needed to put in the closed glass jar which was going to become our terrarium. The terrarium represents the Water Cycle in nature. 

First we got a glass jar, then we collected some pebbles from our school native garden and Maedana and Kapriyani ran off to ask our school caretaker, Carol, for some soil. 

Then we picked some plants from the school yard and we were ready to start our project.

We got some potato plants, a pumpkin plant and a succulent plant from our class window box.
                                 We sorted the seedlings carefully. 



Then my teacher planted each plant by evenly spreading them out in the transparent glass jar. 

We all wanted to have a go at planting but the neck of the jar was far too narrow for us to all get into it.

          
Here are how the plants in the glass jar looked after they were evenly spread out to grow.

Then we added just enough water so that it was wet but not waterlogged.

Then it was time to seal it to make it a closed system like the water cycle in nature.



We used masking tape to make the glass jar secure so that no one would open or tamper with  our closed system terrarium experiment.



Finally we dated the terrarium the 3 November 2014 and signed our group's names on the masking seal.

We knew that we had to have a CONTROL as well as the EXPERIMENT to make valid or true  comparisons in our scientific study. So we chose to use our wheelbarrow garden that sits besides the windowbox in our class. Harishna's chores in class has always been to water the wheelbarrow garden 3 times a week, which are on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 

We decided to place our terrarium in a semi-shade place, that is not in the direct sunlight. 

So JT and Maedana suggested that we place it on the little white board just behind where Daina, Maedana and JT stands in the photo. 

So that is where our closed system terrarium sits now on the ledge of the teacher's white board- right in front of us, for all to observe everyday and all day.

Then we took group photos to celebrated that special event of our experiment. 
"How would the plants in the terrarium grow without giving it any water?" Cortez and JT wanted to know. 

  I don't know the answer for that, let's wait and see what happens in 4-5 months"answered my teacher. "But that would be next year in 2015" cried everyone. 
"Well won't you still be at our school next year?".  Yesss! we all cheers. "Cheers to our terrarium experiment!" all the boys cried.