With the school year in full swing and schoolyard gardens planted all over the city we are well into our fall gardening season!  Your schoolyard garden is a unique element to your school community.  It showcases pride in your school, provides hands-on learning, and exposes your students to fresh vegetables and fruit.

Your students already work in the garden; take your schoolyard garden a step further by integrating the garden into the larger school community.  A few simple garden enhancement ideas will excite your students, faculty, families and volunteers about your schoolyard garden.

Here are just a few enhancement activities:

• “What’s Growing On” Bulletin Board – Showcase your garden’s harvest and your students’ accomplishments
• Partner with art teacher to create art pieces or signage for the garden
• Host school-wide estimates of harvest predictions
• Appoint a garden leader – Rotate a garden leader in with other classroom responsibilities
• Keep a garden log – Keep track of what you planted, when, where, and what you liked; also track watering, daily temperatures, insects
• Family Workdays – take advantage of fall, family events to tackle garden cleanups.
• Share harvest with teachers, principal, and families
• Extend the classroom outside – enjoy the fall weather through reading, journaling, and other classroom work brought out to the garden
• Use circle-time or story-time to read garden themed books
• Upload photos, and short garden events to classroom webpages
• Let students create their own recipes – Create a cookbook to share with class friends and families
• Have a picnic or harvest party