Creating Gardens

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We are beautifying our campus by creating various gardens.  Our 4th graders have planted garden plots to learn about growing vegetables organically.  

The Botany unit is designed to give students hands-on opportunities to explore plant life in various stages, learn about the components of plants, experiment with the scientific method, and link to the concept of nutrition as it relates to fresh produce.  The garden, provided opportunities for all of these goals to be met through one project.  Each  child prepared the beds, utilized their math knowledge to plant the seeds with appropriate proportions, and helped care for the vegetables throughout the germination process.  The link to farm to table nutrition came into play when students were able to harvest their own food and eat the results!

Now that our playground is under construction to help beautify our campus, we are moving our community garden to this section of the campus (the community garden was located in the central part of the campus until the playground project necessitated moving the community garden location):  

While we're waiting to finish our community garden, we have planted other smaller gardens around campus that include vegetables, fruits and herbs:

In the foreground of this particular garden is rosemary and in the pots are strawberries and other herbs.

 
Yet, another garden on campus promotes peace and well-being.  The peace pole in different languages reminds us that we're all connected: to each other, and to the earth.

The results: a more beautiful campus, growing edible fruits and vegetables, increasing our understanding in science and gardening, eventually selling our produce and promoting peace and haromony with each other and our surroundings.