The Schoolyard Gardens program is excited to celebrate our blog’s one-year anniversary! The SYG Blog was created with the hopes that it would be a place where our teachers, parents and students could read about garden tips, find lessons and activities that incorporate the gardens, and information about upcoming Schoolyard Gardens events. What we’ve enjoyed most about our blog is the opportunity to showcase schools and their garden success stories. We hope that by sharing these stories it will inspire others to create their own fun, educational moments in the garden.
To celebrate here are some of our favorite Schoolyard Garden moments:
What’s ahead for Schoolyard Gardens? In addition to our seasonal plantings, check ins and harvest parties, we will be offering pre-gardening lessons during the winters months. Starting in January and February, students and teachers can start talking about plans for their gardens. We hope to get students more involved by helping them choose what they want to grow in their vegetable gardens, and helping them plan it out with the appropriate space. Contact your Schoolyard Garden Assistant for more details.
Planning Your Garden: students practice picking out and planning their gardens using a printed-out garden grid and vegetable cutouts.
Practice Planting Seeds and Transplants: younger students practice planting with fake seeds and transplants in a “garden bin,” to practice working in the soil and spacing out their seeds and plants.
Vegetable Id Flash Cards: students can review the names and characteristics of common vegetables.
We will continue to cultivate our relationships with schools and we look forward to getting to know and grow with the 26 new schools that are now Schoolyard Garden members!