School+Garden+Curriculum

=The School Garden: A Hands-On Teaching Resource= =Great Curriculum Links=

Please post any lesson plans that you have developed, borrowed or found online and used successfully here. The more, the merrier! To add a lesson that you created just click on the file button on the top of this page and upload it from your personal files. Thank you for all of your hard work!!! From time to time we probably need to check here and organize these resources under headings to make them easier to use!

__Local Resources:__ Your local nature center! Warner Nature Center even has a library with curriculum like Project WET and Project WILD. They will also help train staff at your school on how to use the schoolyard as an outdoor classroom. []

__Lesson Ideas:__ How to Use a Pumpkin to Teach Almost ANYTHING: This is an excerpt from a book I am reading called //The Pull of the Earth: Participatory Ethnography in the School Garden// //"Perhaps my favorite example of these cross////-curricular linkages cre////ated in t////he g////arden came from our 'biggest pumpkin ever'. This one pumpkin generated lessons in literacy (the children wrote a book about the life of this pumpkin) mathematics (the children guessed the weight, estimated the number of pumpkin seeds, counted the seeds in base ten), social studies (an entire economics unit was developed around the creation of pumpkin seed packets to sell at their spring market), and of course science (the water cycle, life cycle of plants, weather, food webs, and so on). All from one pumpkin."//

//-//One of my favorite lesson plans was having the kids (5th graders) get into groups of 4 and run through the garden smashing pumpkins and watermelons that had rotted so they could find examples of a food chain AND provide nitrogen for the compost pile.