With the school year in full swing and schoolyard gardens planted all over the city we are well into our fall gardening season! Your schoolyard garden is a unique element to your school community. It showcases pride in your school, provides hands-on learning, and exposes your students to fresh vegetables and fruit.
Your students already work in the garden; take your schoolyard garden a step further by integrating the garden into the larger school community. A few simple garden enhancement ideas will excite your students, faculty, families and volunteers about your schoolyard garden.
Here are just a few enhancement activities:
- “What’s Growing On” Bulletin Board – Showcase your garden’s harvest and your students’ accomplishments
- Partner with art teacher to create art pieces or signage for the garden
- Host school-wide estimates of harvest predictions
- Appoint a garden leader – Rotate a garden leader in with other classroom responsibilities
- Keep a garden log – Keep track of what you planted, when, where, and what you liked; also track watering, daily temperatures, insects
- Family Workdays – take advantage of fall, family events to tackle garden cleanups.
- Share harvest with teachers, principal, and families
- Extend the classroom outside – enjoy the fall weather through reading, journaling, and other classroom work brought out to the garden
- Use circle-time or story-time to read garden themed books
- Upload photos, and short garden events to classroom webpages
- Let students create their own recipes – Create a cookbook to share with class friends and families
- Have a picnic or harvest party