August is coming to an end and that means school starts soon in many communities across the US and Canada. This is an exciting time of the year with a lot going on for students, parents, and teachers, but it’s also a great time to remember that gardening is for everyone and gardening-based projects can play an important role in classrooms and curricula in any school. While we’re not experts on education, we’d like to offer some suggestions for possible garden projects to enhance classroom learning and we’ll of course provide links to more detailed resources. Let’s dig in!
It’s a big project and requires a lot of cooperation on all levels, but starting a school garden can be a great activity for both teachers and students and a wonderful way to learn about all kinds of things—biology, botany, ecology, the basics of agriculture, and home economics/food studies. A school garden doesn’t have to be a large-scale, in-ground affair: a container garden on a patio or a few raised beds are enough for young folks to start learning! Even a few plants indoors can teach many important lessons—but more on that in a bit!
Taking a more focused approach, planting seeds and watching them grow in the classroom can be another fun way for students to see how plants work in an up close and personal way. There are a number of fun and easy-to-do (read: affordable) ways for teachers to bring this kind of project to life—Agclassrooms.org has a great list of ideas here—but it can be as simple as starting seeds on wet paper towels or in a small seed starting tray and watching them grow. Along the way, teachers can talk about how seeds develop while the students get to observe it happen. And at the end of course you can transplant your seedlings to a container and have a new class plant!
Having plants in the classroom is nice in and of itself—plants bring life and color to a room—but it can also be a learning opportunity and a chance to teach responsibility. Watering plants is a good chore for younger children, who get to learn about caring for another living thing and how to respond to its needs. As with the seed-starting activities, you can teach about the life cycle of the plant as it creates new growth, flowers and fruits, and sheds leaves. We do suggest finding a relatively fast-growing and small-scale plant; classrooms don't tend to have a huge amount of excess space! We also recommend positioning the plant where it’s visible but out of reach of students until the appropriate time for safety reasons.
If circumstances don’t permit for a school garden or plants in the classroom, we can still incorporate plants into the curriculum by learning about native or local plants. There are a number of great resources online for identifying and exploring the plants that are native to where you are, and (we hope) you have a nearby park or some plants around your school that you can incorporate into your lessons. Remember: learning about local plants means learning about the plants that grow around you, whatever they are. Every species of grass is unique by definition, so take a look around and see what lives near you—it might make for an interesting lesson for your students!
Most cities or towns have a public park or garden—maybe even a botanical garden or arboretum—and most places also have a local extension office that helps with agricultural education. Visiting a garden or having a garden expert visit the classroom can be a fun break from the routine for students combined with a wonderful learning opportunity. Teachers or administrators interested in this will need to do a bit of homework as to what’s available around you, but it’s worth a look!
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: at Gardzen we believe that gardening is for everyone, and that some form of gardening.
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