Good morning! We are a brand new garden program and did a trial run with our ECE kiddos last summer as our school age students were still virtual, but some things we found successful were taking the young children out in the garden and allowing them to harvest the produce. They would then take it back to their classroom and they did taste tests, they pickled some vegetables, they baked muffins using zucchini, etc. We also had them harvest vegetables that they could cut open and look at the differences and similarities on the inside of various vegetables. What does it look like? Comparing the seeds (number, size, shape, etc.) For art, children created art with some of our produce i.e. leaf prints with large leafy vegetables like kale; rolling corn cobs in paint and making textured paintings, etc. We didn't even do all of the amazing things you could do because our program is so new. We are now reserving garden beds by grade level and grades that are participating will create signs for their Beds and what they're growing. We hope that on our Field Day this year that we can have our garden be a station in the rotation where we'll talk about the benefits of the garden, how to start their gardens and make a plan for each grade level garden with student input guiding the direction of the gardens.
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Kim Schubring
St. Joseph Academy
Milwaukee WI
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Original Message:
Sent: 03-08-2022 03:24:27 PM
From: Sarah Pounders
Subject: STEAM Garden Stories
In follow up to the STEAM in the School Food Garden Webinar, I would like to start this thread as a place for folks to share personal stories about integrating STEAM into the school food garden – both successes and challenges – and use this as a way to move talking about curriculum and standards from being abstract to being concrete and practical.
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Sarah Pounders
Senior Education Specialist
The Woodlands TX
832-418-6540
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