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 The educational use of our garden includes a spring salad garden that is tied to our science unit on gardening and nutrition. My third graders plant, care for, and ultimately clean and serve their salad in the school cafeteria. The popularity of this unit with our students and their parents has led to many other planting and building projects on school grounds. We have built birdfeeders, butterfly houses and birdhouses. We have planted a butterfly garden, several flowerbeds, and many shrubs and trees to beautify our school grounds and to encourage wildlife for observation and study. While planting these we study the value of companion planting and how this can be an effective tool in pest management. This led to applying for a government-recycling grant as the project expanded. Much to my surprise, we were awarded this grant, which provided us with enough money to construct a small greenhouse. We now have a plant sale every spring with plants grown and taken care of by my third graders. Their math skills improve dramatically as they proudly sell items that they have grown themselves. Composting of cafeteria waste, leaves, grass clippings, and items brought from the children’s homes is done to study how dirt is made and to be used in our gardening projects. The spring salad garden is maintained solely by the 3rd graders while school is in session. The salad beds are composted during the summer months or clover, peas, or other nitrogen rich materials are planted. All flowerbeds are composted during the summer months, which helps with the weed control but are in full bloom all summer long. Community members enjoy this and they use our playground. Several parent and student volunteers living in the area keep an eye on things and water or weed if needed. There are many social aspects of these gardening projects. The students proudly grow their own spring salad garden, which they serve in the school cafeteria and to our staff. They learn that it takes hard work to prepare this salad and it makes them appreciate the work the cafeteria ladies do each day as well as their parents in preparing meals. They also serve their salad proudly to the Parent Faculty Club to thank them for all the special things this group does for us through the year. Social skills are sharpened at our plant sale as we learn the art of good salesmanship. Parent volunteers supervise during this sale. The students are continually involved as they enter 3rd grade in our planting projects. In the fall and winter we compost leaves and organic materials, observe worm composting in a small bin in the classroom, gather seeds, and observe and feed the birds using sunflower seeds we grew from the previous classes efforts. In the spring we begin all the gardening activities I’ve described in the previous paragraphs. The end products of the gardening unit as described previously are a spring salad garden, greenhouse plant sale, beautiful flower beds, and the observation of butterflies and wildlife with plants the 3rd graders have grown themselves. These are the concrete, tangible items one can view. The end product of all these activities that I find the most rewarding is the pride my students exhibit and responsibility these activities instill in them. They show a peaked interest in nature and an understanding of how things co-exist. Excited interested students involve their parents, which promotes positive school public relations. These activities also develop a student appreciation for how hard our ancestors had to work just to survive. |
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