The Garden Classroom

Creative ways to use the garden to inspire learning, for kids ages 4-8 Packed with garden-based activities that promote science, math, reading, writing, imaginative play, and arts and crafts, The Garden Classroom offers a whole year of outdoor play and learning ideas—however big or small your garden. Every garden offers children a rich, sensory playground, full of interesting things to discover and learn about. There's a whole lot of science happening right before their eyes. The garden can also be a place to develop math and literacy skills, as the outdoors offers up plenty of invitations to weave learning into everyday gardening. The garden classroom is a place where plants grow, and where children grow too.

In Teaching in Nature's Classroom: Principles of Garden-Based Education, Nathan Larson shares a philosophy of teaching in the garden. Rooted in years of experience and supported by research, Larson presents fifteen guiding principles of garden-based education. These principles and best practices are illustrated through engaging stories from the field. The book features vivid paintings by mural artist Becky Hiller and connections to the research literature provided by Alex Wells and Sam Dennis of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Environmental Design Lab.

Teaching literature unit based on the popular children's story, The secret garden.

Sow the seeds of science and wonder and inspire the next generation of Earth stewards The School Garden Curriculum offers a unique and comprehensive framework, enabling students to grow their knowledge throughout the school year and build on it from kindergarten to eighth grade. From seasonal garden activities to inquiry projects and science-skill building, children will develop organic gardening solutions, a positive land ethic, systems thinking, and instincts for ecological stewardship. The world needs young people to grow into strong, scientifically literate environmental stewards. Learning gardens are great places to build this knowledge, yet until now there has been a lack of a multi-grade curriculum for school-wide teaching aimed at fostering a connection with the Earth. The book offers: A complete K-8 school-wide framework Over 200 engaging, weekly lesson plans – ready to share Place-based activities, immersive learning, and hands-on activities Integration of science, critical thinking, permaculture, and life skills Links to Next Generation Science Standards Further resources and information sources. A model and guide for all educators, The School Garden Curriculum is the complete package for any school wishing to use ecosystem perspectives, science, and permaculture to connect children to positive land ethics, personal responsibility, and wonder, while building vital lifelong skills. AWARDS FINALIST | 2019 Foreword INDIES: Education

With her sure, loving, gardener's touch, Mrs. Spitzer nutures the students in her classroom each year.

Explore the world of weed free, productive, and organic gardening, with Lynn Gillespie, the creator of the High Performance Garden System. Learn the history of gardening systems, what sets the High Performance Garden apart, and where to get started on creating your own garden system in your backyard today.

A horticultural resource for use with an indoor classroom garden, from windowsill to a home made or ready-to-assemble GrowLab Indoor Garden. Comprehensive information for raising vegetables, flowers and herbs to maturity in the classroom, creative classroom projects and interdisciplinary activity ideas, and complete plans for building your owm classroom light garden.

Designed to provide teachers and administrators with a range of practical suggestions for making the schoolyard a varied and viable learning resource, Moving the Classroom Outdoors presents concrete examples of how urban, suburban, and rural schools have enhanced the school site as a teaching tool. --from publisher description.

Offering a fresh approach to bringing life to schools and schools to life, this book goes beyond touting the benefits of learning gardens to survey them as a whole-systems design solution with potential to address myriad interrelated social, ecological, and educational issues. The theoretical and conceptual framework presented creatively places soil at the center of the discourse on sustainability education and learning garden design and pedagogy. Seven elements and attributes of living soil and learning gardens are presented as a guide for sustainability education: cultivating a sense of place; fostering curiosity and wonder; discovering rhythm and scale; valuing biocultural diversity; embracing practical experience ; nurturing interconnectedness. The living soil of learning gardens forms the basis of a new metaphoric language serving to contest dominant mechanistic metaphors presently influencing educational discourse. Student voices and examples from urban schools provide practical understanding of how bringing life to schools can indeed bring schools to life.