Getting children involved in gardening

A key point in our mission for the school garden is to get children outside and more involved in gardening. We believe they should be taught where their food comes from, how to grow it and also be given the opportunity to get involved in the entire process. The school garden is mostly for them and we are trying to come up with ways to get them involved and excited about gardening. 

Over the past couple weeks we distributed seed starting kits to the 17 teachers who signed up to take part. We were very surprised that we had over 75% of teacher participation with more asking to participate each day! The children became very excited watching the seeds they planted germinate into seedlings and some classes have already begun "blocking up" their plants!

To keep that excitement going we want them to also be involved in creating the garden. We believe having them help layout the garden and construct the beds would give them a sense of pride and ownership. We were concerned about possible injuries using power tools so I worked on creating a raised bed system that the children would be able to help assemble.

Just about every kid loves building with lincoln logs and blocks, so I set out to design a raised bed system that could be assembled without power tools.

The design I came up with worked really well, but I wanted to see if it would actually go together with ease and be sturdy, so I built a 1/3 scale model.

I am extremely pleased with how it looks and how well it slips together.

I think the children will really enjoy taking part in building all the raised beds and being allowed to participate in the creation their garden!

I am going to pre-cut, notch and sand all the parts. On May 4th we are going to have a ground breaking ceremony where we will be laying out the garden, building the beds, tilling the outer patches and putting up our garden sign! The children that already know about it are excited to take part and hopefully the enthusiasm will continue to grow as the garden grows! We feel that by involving the children as much as possible, they will really benefit from this project.

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn".

~Benjamin Franklin

~Rob~

Help us win a grant for out school garden!
(Click picture to find out how)

Shared at:

Tilly's Nest
Deborah Jean's Dandelion House
The Backyard Farming Connection