Brief Description:

  Students create a garden journal and plan what they need for a garden and what they want to plant.

Objectives :

• Describe what you need to create a garden
• Describe what plants need to grow and survive
• Construct a “birds-eye-view” picture of a garden
• Take ownership of the garden by helping to decide what is planted
• Brainstorm a wide variety of factors to consider in planning a garden
• Make group decisions in planning a classroom/community garden

Materials :

notebook or handmade book to use as a garden journal

drawing and writing materials

the book This Year’s Garden by Cynthia Rylant (optional)

seed catalogues or gardening magazines (optional)

glue and scissors (optional)

NC Standard Course of Study Goals :

Science –1.01, 1.03

English Language Arts –3.01, 3.03, 5.02

Healthful Living –4.05, 5.01

Math – 1.01, 4.01

S.S. –1.03, 2.03, 5.05

Getting Started / Procedure

• Begin by talking with students about their garden experience, who has a garden at home, who has grandparents with gardens? Have students brainstorm a little about why someone would grow a garden? – Nutrition, fitness, fun, beauty… Students should have a chance to share their favorite parts about gardens. Explain to students that this year the whole school gets to help make a garden, and they get to help plan it.

• Discuss different types of gardens – vegetable, flower, herb, etc. Discuss what you will need to make the garden - tools, site, water, sun, seeds, plants, teamwork, etc. What are things we need to consider when planning out a site? What do plants need to grow – air, water, light, space? Are there certain types of things that won’t grow in our garden?

• Introduce the garden journal; discuss how scientists make observations, predictions, and notes. This is an important book that we will need each time we do anything with the garden. This first activity can be done on the cover or the journal or as the first entry.

• Ask students if they can guess what a “Birds-eye-view” may be? Talk about perspective and how you are going to draw a picture from the perspective of a bird looking down on a garden. This is each student’s chance to illustrate what his or her ideal garden would look like.

Have students consider the following:

• What they want to plant
• Have them think about how much space different types of plants might need
• How many of each plant do they want – would you want only one carrot plant, 50 hot pepper plants?

• Students can cut out plants from a seed catalogue or draw them. Students should do their best to label all plants and if time allows, write about the special or unique parts of their garden.

• Students can volunteer to share their garden plan if time allows.

• Create a class list of the things students want to plant, add a tick mark each time a plant is included in another students plan

• Discuss what a community garden would be? Who could help in the garden (human/animals)? Discuss similarities and differences between student’s garden plans. How would your garden be different in different families, cultures? How could we combine all the students' garden into a community garden? Looking at the class list, pick the top 3 things to plant, Will the plants they chose grow here? Work with students to decide a few things they should defiantly include in the garden.

• To help students start thinking about garden planning and the cycle of a garden read This Year’s Garden by Cynthia Rylant. Discuss what the people in the book did each season and relate that to where we are at in the garden cycle.

Extensions:

• Garden books
• Have students create their own garden story.
• Work as a class to make a large “Birds-eye garden plan” to display in the hall
• Have kids put together a “how to plan a garden” book
• Pick a plant or vegetable to research as a class project.