Garden Planning - 3rd Grade

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, survive and reproduce
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, optional – seed catalogues or gardening magazines, glue and scissors

Standard Course of Study Goals :

Science - 1.02, 1.03, 2.03

English Language Arts – 2.08, 4.02, 4.04

Healthful Living – 5.06, 9.01

Math – 1.05

S.S. –1.01, 1.04, 2.02, 2.03

Getting Started / Procedure

Begin by talking with students about their garden experience last year, expressing to them that they have worked in a garden and now they have a chance to use their experience to help plan this year’s garden. Have students review a little about why someone grows a garden? – Nutrition, fitness, fun, save money, beauty…

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? Deciding what to plant? What was their favorite/least favorite part about the garden last year?

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 or an insect 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 shape they would like their garden

What they want to plant

How things would be organized. Would you want to plant sunflowers in front of lettuce (height)?

Have them think about how much space different types of plants might need

Estimate what fraction of the garden each type of plant would cover. Would they want half of their garden to be lettuce? Would that leave them enough space to plant other things?

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 label all plants and 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 a 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 states, countries? 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.

Extensions:

Let each student, or small groups of students pick a plant to research as a class project.
Work as a class to make a large “Birds-eye garden plan” to display in the hall
Garden math problems related to fractions, percentages, perimeter, area, etc.
Garden Prompt writing
Have kids put together a “how to plan a garden” book
Garden books