New (free!) Guide to Gardening with Kids

SchoolGarden

Inspired to start a gardening program for kids at your school or elsewhere?

The American Horticultural Society has just teamed up with Cornell University to update their FREE online guide to starting gardening programs for children. Titled Sowing the Seeds of Success: How to Start and Sustain a Kids’ Gardening Project in your Community,” the 160-page downloadable guide is designed to address “the increased interest in school and community garden projects and the troubling issues of food insecurity and nature deficit disorder.”

It can be used by communities anywhere in North America and around the world. The guide includes sections designed for different audiences, along with relevant activities, program tools, and links to additional resources.

Fiona Doherty of the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell sees the guide as a resource for empowering youth with the confidence and “skills to become our next generation of environmental stewards.”

Get your guide at www.gardening.cals.cornell.edu. For more resources for starting a school garden, check out our blog post on School Garden Resources for Teachers. If you’re not a teacher, but want to help one out with tons of lesson plans and other practical help for getting kids outside of the classroom to learn, feel free to share!

School Garden Teacher Resources

Tools to help non-gardeners teach lessons in an outdoor classroom

 

School gardens aren’t just a great way to incorporate some outdoor time into your kids’ school day — they also offer countless opportunities for teachers to bring STEM lessons to life (literally).

But asking overburdened teachers, who may not be gardeners themselves, to figure out how to add a gardening project to their busy day that also aligns with ever-changing curriculum standards, can understandably be a huge stumbling block.

Have you already done the work to get a school garden started, but don’t see teachers using it? Or do you need to convince administration that one can be a useful teaching tool before you can break ground? Here’s a list of practical resources you can share with teachers. We’ve included school garden teacher training, lesson plans, planting plans, worksheets and teaching tools, videos, and complete outdoor classroom curricula. We’ve also included just a few resources to find grants (start with the first one to uncover a treasure trove of options).

Just a few of the lesson plans available from KidsGardening.org
These are just a few of the lesson plans available from KidsGardening.org

Some of these school garden teaching resources are suitable for outdoor classrooms throughout the US, but we’ve focused on ones developed to align with Georgia curriculum standards. If you are looking for other states, reach out to your Cooperative Extension Service or 4-H program to see if they can help you find ones suitable for your teaching standards and growing conditions, or take a look at this extensive list from the UGA Extension School Garden Resource Website. The Cooperative Extension Service may even be able to connect you with some helpful Master Gardener Extension Volunteers who can help assist with your school gardening projects!

School garden lesson plans

Need more inspiration and lesson plans? Visit our School Garden Teacher Resources Pinterest board!

School Garden Planning Tools

Of course, all those lessons need a place to happen. Here are some tools for planning and designing your school garden:

School Garden Teacher Training

School Garden Grants

And finally, if the spirit is willing but the budget is weak, here are just a few starting points for finding funding to make your school garden dreams come true. We recommend starting with EE in Georgia, which has tons of options.

And yes, there are tons more of these kinds of resources out there, but we wanted to give a manageable list that should give your school gardening program a great start, and your teachers some easy resources that won’t take a ton of time or training to use.

See more on our Pinterest board!

Does back to school means back inside?

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It’s back to school time here in Georgia. And suddenly, outside play comes to a grinding halt. But does it have to be like that? If your child spends most of their day at school, maybe the answer is to add in the outdoors to their regular school routine.

There’s lot to be said about the trend to integrate “nature play” into school curriculum (including nature preschools, which we will look at later). But for now, I just want to highlight a couple of conferences and programs that can help you & your child’s educator start understanding how to make that work at your school.

A lot can be done by empowered, passionate parents & teachers working together, and these conference can give you a great place to start.