The maple sap is flowing, and Sippican School's Winter Garden Club is learning that trees have more to offer than shade.

Diane Cook, a retired third grade teacher, leads the garden club and said it is a way to connect kids to the food they eat. In warmer months, the students plant seeds, tend the garden and arrange the flowers they grow, but there is still plenty to learn when the snow piles up.

Cook has taught kids how to read the nutritional information on a package and the meaning of organic and GMO (genetically modified organism) as well as identifying artificial flavoring and coloring.

This week, “it's all about the trees,” said Cook, who also taught kids about the structure of pine trees.

On Tuesday and Thursday, Cook took kids to see the five sugar maple trees she tapped. Located beside the baseball field behind Sippican School, the trees are an example of what healthy, natural food trees can offer.

“They're more than things that produce leaves to rake,” said Cook.

Two of the buckets of sap were overflowing on Tuesday, and there was more than enough to taste.

At 97 percent water and three percent sugar, the sap wasn't exactly the dark brown syrup the kids might have expected.

“It feels like there's one grain of sugar in it,” said one student.

But another kid could taste the sweetness. “This is delicious!” he said.

Emma Zhou liked the taste.

“It's fabulous,” she said.

Since March 12, the trees have produced more than 20 gallons of sap, aided by the cold nights and the warmer days that help the sap run up and down the veins of the tree.

On Friday, the kids got to taste the final product. Cook spent four and a half hours boiling down 10 gallons of the sap at a kitchen in Mattapoisett's How on Earth.

The sap needs to hit 217 degrees to reach the correct consistency.

Kids tasted spoonfuls of the syrup and also had a scavenger hunt in How on Earth for products using the natural sweetener.

Each child who participated got to put their name into a raffle for a jar of the maple syrup, “which I think is a pretty precious gift,” said Cook.