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Welcome 5
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0-1: A Welcome Note from Victoria 30 minLecture1.1
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0-2: Good Things to Know 30 minLecture1.2
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0-3: Why Literacy Outdoors? 30 minLecture1.3
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0-4: Ideas to Kick Start Your Literacy Garden 30 minLecture1.4
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0-5: Supply List for Reading, Writing, Listening, and Talking Outdoors 30 minLecture1.5
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Module 1: Gardens that Feed 5
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1-1: Welcome to The Gardens that Feed 30 minLecture2.1
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1-2: Gather Seeds of Inspiration 30 minLecture2.2
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1-3: Plant Literacy Ideas 30 minLecture2.3
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1-4: Grow Literacy Activities 30 minLecture2.4
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1-5: Harvest Curriculum-on-the-Go Kits 30 minLecture2.5
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Module 2: Gardens as Outdoor Learning Stations that Inspire Themes 5
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2-1: Welcome to Gardens as Outdoor Learning Stations that Inspire Themes 30 minLecture3.1
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2-2: Gather Seeds of Inspiration 30 minLecture3.2
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2-3: Plant Literacy Ideas 30 minLecture3.3
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2-4: Grow Literacy Activities 30 minLecture3.4
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2-5: Harvest Literacy Curriculum Kits 30 minLecture3.5
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Module 3: Gardens that Attract Wildlife 5
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3-1: Welcome The Gardens that Attract Wildlife 30 minLecture4.1
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3-2: Gather Seeds of Inspiration 30 minLecture4.2
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3-3: Plant Literacy Ideas 30 minLecture4.3
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3-4: Grow Literacy Activities 30 minLecture4.4
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3-5: Harvest Literacy Curriculum Kits 30 minLecture4.5
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Module 4: Gardens for Beauty and Art 5
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4-1: Welcome to The Gardens for Beauty and Art 30 minLecture5.1
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4-2: Gather Seeds of Inspiration 30 minLecture5.2
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4-3: Plant Ideas 30 minLecture5.3
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4-4: Grow Activities 30 minLecture5.4
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4-5: Harvest Curriculum Kits 30 minLecture5.5
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64 Comments
My husband and I did have a garden that feeds this summer. I currently do not have a classroom of children but the garden Charlie and I had did well with squash, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, potatoes, peppers, sweet corn. We have an elderly couple across the road that we shared our blessing with.
I would love to have a garden at my next school! Kids just love to dig in the dirt and watch what happens to seeds they plant. I like to cook with children and believe they would love to cook and eat what they grow.
This is lovely. Your experience in your own garden will carry over with your new class. I also love that you shared your blessing with your elderly neighbors. Makes me think that there might be an opportunity for an Intergenerational experience. Well done!
Our children did an amazing job the last summer.They planted carrots and we all saw like they grew.We did a outside activities about it. Watering them and cleaning them.
At BCLC we started gardens this spring on our new natural playground. We have great garden boxes. At first, we were excited. We had the kids carry buckets of water to the gardens each afternoon. However, we found that the children were rough on the plants. Tomatoes were picked prematurely and tossed over the fence. 5 watermelons suffered the same fate. Hmmm. Some of the teachers put fencing around their gardens, but I noticed that the plants withered from lack of water, as the preschoolers could no longer water them. Next year we are hoping to have a more coordinated effort. Yes, we did use colorful hand-painted signs to label the gardens.
Ahhh….there is a learning curve here. Look at each of these experiences as opportunities for lessons. Maybe showing the kids how to treat the plants, etc. Coordinating the watering etc. Creating a picking garden..or buying the veggies or having fewer kids around the raised garden beds at a time. Have fun!
We have 6 2/4 beds and 5 4/4 beds, but we’re all done planting for the fall. Each class has their own garden box. All contained vegetables, except one which had sunflowers.
Lucky kids!
Yes we do have harden feeds I remember last summer our children love to put water every time we go Outside.
They feel so accomplished with this task.
Yes at my preschool I work at we have a Garden That Feeds. In our garden that feeds we have tomatoes, lettuce, and peas. At our preschool once we pick all three of those vegetables we use them to make salads for lunch here at our children center. Before we would make the salad I made sure to tell the children that these were from our gardens that we have outside on our playground.
Fantastic!
We have a few garden boxes that grow things like tomatoes, pumpkins, and the like. It didn’t go so well this year because kids playing in the outdoor space have open access to them and would pick things before they were ripe or ready.
Just look at this as an opportunity to teach. What does it taste like when you pick and eat it early?
Within my center, we have attempted to do a garden that feeds. We had the children decorate signs to label all of the fruits and vegetables. The center I work at is divided into classrooms so each classroom had their own plants to take care of. The children would plant the seeds then water the plants when it was needed. The weather in New England wasn’t the best and most of the plants haven’t survived. It also doesn’t help that the younger kids are very curious and tend to pick at the plants before th why are ready.
Here at BCLC we have raised garden beds with chalkboard signs on them both in front of the facility and in the playground. Each age group of students got different boxes, but I don’t think we utilized them as we should. We failed to water them regularly and teach the kids to be gentle around the plants. We do not have a Little Free Library or wonder boxes which are something we should add.
We had a Gardening club for our school age group. Part of the challenge of maintaining this club was having enough experienced educators who understood the practice of teaching kids. I would love to get it started again.
Curiosity + Positive Attitude will take you places. Great job!
Yes, we have garden that feeds. We have 5 4X4 boxes and 6 2X4 boxes. The classrooms were able to pick what they wanted to plant. Some of the boxes had whole made signs. We have logs for gathering that the children can move to be around the boxes. The garden beds were put in when they built the nature playground.
I do have a garden that Feeds. It has vegetables and trees with wooden signs of what they are and the name of it called. This garden started when I was in middle school. The elements and features are currently in my garden are signs, seeds, garden tools, and helpers. The design of this garden is simple and pretty. I do use my garden that feeds in curriculum by working through it and teaching it by step by step on how to do it.
Terrific!
At our school center we are lucky to have gardens that feed. Each age group has their own section of raised planters to use for planting. Our classroom was lucky enough to be one of the first to use the planters and as a class we planted both string beans (of different varieties) as well as squash plants. The beans did very well this year and we collected them at different times in their growing cycle to show the children when a plant is ready for harvest and when it is not. When the beans were ready for eating we had the classroom wash and try them during lunch. Surprisingly, almost all of classroom enjoyed eating the beans and would periodically ask over the following months if there were any more!
SUCCESS!!! Beans are great to grow with kids!
My center has tried to start Gardens that Feed on several occasions, but unfortunately, we often don’t have enough staff willing to keep up with upkeep and harvesting because of where our gardens are located (by the parking lot), how many children we have enrolled, and lack of resources/support. It’s a great idea but doesn’t seem all that feasible with our current setup, which is frustrating.
Never say never. Remember…everything is figure-out-table.
The idea of having a garden that feed has great deal of possibilities. Gardens that feed could mean growing food for our children and their families to take home. The children would help plant and care for the garden, pick the edible plants/vegetables and even create something (such as a salad) that they could share with loved one. The same garden could be used to plant edible things for local wildlife. I’m this instance the children. Could bring in science by looking and observing what type of wildlife eat what type of plants. The possibilities are endless!
Great energy!!! You are bound for success because you believe the possibilities are endless. Way to go!
Here at Beverly Children’s Learning Center we have already begun planting various Vegetables in are raised bed gardens. This Spring we plan on really focusing on getting our children involved with more planting and the types of vegetables they would like to try and grow. We feel like it would teach them responsibility and respect for the area and they would be responsible for watering and caring for the plants.
Great!
We do have raised gardens at our program.
Be a good idea for children to plant their own food to learn where food actually comes from.
We have raised garden boxes at our center. Each classroom has one or two boxes they can plant vegetables and/or flowers in.
In the process with our gardens issue we have is keeping the veges from being plucked out by 4 year olds.
am in the process of setting up a garden
I think that would be a wonderful idea for something to implement in our all natural playground.
We do have a garden that feeds. A lot of our garden beds are filled with lettuce, green beans, and cucumbers. The children were able to pick their own lettuce and create their own salads!
We have gardens that feed at the preschool where I work. They have grown tomatoes which the kids like to pick when they are small and green. Not many have grown beyond that but it is still great to see the fascination of the kids with the plants at that stage. We also have boxes with soil where they can dig and become familiar with the touch and feel of soil.
We do have a garden that feeds. A lot of our garden beds are filled with lettuce, green beans, and cucumbers. The children were able to pick their own lettuce and make their own salad. We did have the flower beds labeled. It would have been more successful if we talked to the children about garden beds and how to properly care for them.
I am not very good at growing vegetables but I am better at growing flowers!
Starting with a small indoor garden we can transfer outdoors is what I want to do
tried a garden at home Very time consuming and may have started to big
Trial and error is the name of the game! 🙂
Here at the Beverly Children’s Learning Center we have about eight rectangular garden beds that feed shared between two separate programs. These garden bed have only been around for a year or so and contain signs and a gathering place. This yea not all the produce made it to table due to curious hands, but next year I am excited too think of new ways to protect the gardens without closing them off to the children.
I grow strawberries ,tomatoes, peppers, squash, lettuce, kale and many different herbs. The children love to help pick them when they are ripe.
Always grew up with a garden.My grandmother grew everything from tomatoes to strawberries. Watching her cook with what she grew always was a learning experience.
I did for personal but now that I just started the family daycare the kids and I will be doing it next spring.
Last year I started lettuce seeds with the children under lights. We then transplanted half to an outside bed, and then made some guesses about which group would do better, the lettuces with real sun and rain, or artificial light and watering. We then cut all the indoor and outdoor plants, washed and ate them. Some parents wee astonished to hear that their children ate a lettuce! We watched to see if they would grow back, and they did. The kids made observation pictures of the plants. All in all, it was successful and a nice step beyond the bean in the cup.
I love this example. It also shows the impact on kids when they grow their own food. I call this magic! There is a magic to teaching outdoors!
Sometimes with the gardens that feed the teachers need to be educated too. When the kids picked the beans from the garden and I told them that they are eatable the other teachers started to panic. Children needs to be taught about food preparation too!
We have 54 acres that are not at all set up for the public. There is a nice road that goes through it but we have to limit access because we can’t really let the public walk through the food production areas. We do have lots of food plants we sell for veg garderns. I will think about signs there, for starters.
Super!
Hello, friends… I am hustling to catch up here! Already a week behind (crazy at work AND at home recently!) but looking forward to viewing all the new material. Our (Head Start) program has tried creating gardens several times at my site. We had a very large vegetable garden one year that was very successful. The teacher who started the process stuck with it from start to finish; sadly, the following year, she did not wish to continue with it herself, and no one else was interested or willing to put in the work, even though I prepped the entire garden and put in the plants. By late July it was a dying mess… My classroom is open and I only work from September to June, although many more classrooms here are open year-round. Another year, some volunteers from a local company came and put in a couple of raised beds as well as a planting bench in one of our playgrounds, and again, it was moderately successful that first year, but has been dormant ever since. I am wondering if the main problem here is that so many of our teaching staff are inner-city kids, born and bred, and feel no connection to the whole idea of gardening…
At any rate, the most I’ve done in several years is planting and germinating seeds in the classroom, and then sending the sprouts home with the kids. Last year, I invited the parents to participate at a Family Engagement event where they were given the choice of herbs or flowers for planting. Nearly every one chose the herbs! It sometimes feels kind of discouraging in terms of having any success in keeping a garden going at school. We need to somehow spark enthusiasm amongst the majority of the staff first, I think.
I think this problem of keeping school gardens, particularly food gardens, going all summer is very common. I find it very discouraging as well. I met a woman at the Common Ground Fair who shared with me that her school (somewhere outside Boston) has parents sign up for watering and weeding duties for one week each summer, and they have turned a patch of asphalt into a raised bed “pizza garden” in the city with lots of involvement. Good Luck!
These types of gardens can be challenging with programs that do not run during the summer months. If done correctly, they can also be a fabulous project to bring a community together.
We have a garden that feeds but have found success in also making it a theme garden within that (3 sisters (beans/squash/corn), salsa, pizza etc.)
Something we wrestle with is the value of exploration (rolling veggies down ramps, sink and float experiments, measuring, smashing up to see what’s inside, using veggies as props in storytelling and dramatic play) versus honoring food as food and keeping things as edible as possible being handled by a class of preschoolers. Absolutely not mutually exclusive, but…
Thrilled that you have a Garden the Feeds and it sounds like it is very mature and you have been soaking up the curriculum opportunities. Fabulous. I love that you brought up the value of exploration vs. the honoring food as a food and keeping things as edible as possible. I want to turn this question back out the group (will also post on the Facebook page) and see if other teachers struggle with the same issue. Welcome!
Our Preschool currently does not have a garden. I have grown herbs in a prior school that had more green at our disposal. Our current challenges will be designing a space that does not interfere with the gross motor needs of the children and will not be subject to destruction. My initial idea is to have raised boxes with some fencing, but I just need clearance and again, we are working with limited space. The playground does receive lots of sun, which is a bonus.
Thanks for describing your outdoor space. This always helps me get a sense of what teachers are working with. Have you tried container gardens with herbs? This is a fun solution when you have limited space. You can have the option of moving them around when children need more room for gross motor play. Yea for sun!!
We have gardens that feed. We plant tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, vining beans, lettuce, cabbage and herbs.
Yea!!! The kids must love this! Do you plant seeds indoors? Have you ever planted Peas?
We have planted peas. The Toddlers and squirrels always beat us to the harvest.
We do start seeds indoors.
🙂
Tried a feeding garden at home Took on too much Vastly overgrown Animals had a field day
🙂