Congratulations to Lawrenceville Elementary of Lawrenceville for the Honorable Mention Award for the contest.
STRENGTHS AND HIGHLIGHTS:
HEALTH AND NUTRITION EDUCATION:
Health and Nutrition Education: Through tasting and preparing fresh, healthful dishes, students are exposed to nutritious food. With lessons on garden food webs and soil testing, students learn about the connection between the health of our food systems and our own health.
Environmental Stewardship (reducing, reusing, recycling and composting etc): Whether planting, weeding, or harvesting, students, staff and families share in the learning experience of environmental stewardship. Students learn to reduce, reuse and recycle through composting and recycling paper products. Our children get to experience food from a seed to a plate during harvest festivals where they assist with food preparation, whether it is soup, salad or ice cream. They feel ownership of the grounds and pride in its beauty as they weed, plant bulbs and flowers, and pick up litter.
Other uses of our garden’s produce include food bank donations. Summer garden care volunteers are encouraged to harvest crops that are ripe and in the fall, a portion of the harvest is donated to Trenton Area Soup Kitchen.
CURRICULUM USES:
Kindergarten: Students are provided with leaves of various shapes and sizes. After discussion of leaves as food factories students “feed” the leaf with the carbon dioxide from their breaths. Students measure the length of their leaf and estimate how many beans will fit on the leaf, then test their predictions. This connects with the Kindergarten Measurement unit on using standard and nonstandard units.
2nd and 3rd Grades: “Old World and New World Foods” Students learn about the Old World and New World and foods native to each region. They explore how foods move about the world, and play a sorting game where they have to guess where a food originated, and whether European settlers to North America would have been familiar with the food. Students also sample traditionally preserved foods (dried cranberries and beef jerky) from the Old and New Worlds. This connects with Social Studies (Native Americans and world exploration), Nutrition and Food Safety.
Opportunities for garden related teacher professional development: The garden lessons themselves are opportunities for professional development as teachers observe and participate in lessons with the students, increasing their comfort level with outdoor instruction and garden topics. This modeling/mentoring approach has proved successful in increasing teacher use of outdoor curriculum. In addition, Roberta Hunter and Snipes Farm staff work with faculty during staff meetings in spring and fall to provide additional development.
SCHOOL GARDEN PROGRAM PHOTOS: