Spring School Garden Unit

LESSON 1 : SOIL

In this lesson students will gets hands on learning investigating soil composition and properties. Students will tally graph and analyze their findings. As well as further explore and classify soil by Types (clay, loam, sand) with a soil separation activity.

SOIL EXPLORATION LESSON PLAN

WHAT IS IN SOIL - Lesson Plan

VIDEO: What's the Dirt on ... Dirt? -SciShow Kids

LESSON 2 : COMPOST
Compost is a natural way of recycling that can be used to enrich and amend soil to provide nutrients for plant growth. In this lesson students will learn what items can and can not be composted, How decomposers break down organic material, and begin contributing to the compost bin for the school garden. The link below "Do the Rot Thing..." has a variety of lessons and activities to further explore composting.

COMPOST LESSON PLAN
COMPOST PowerPoint

DO THE ROT THING : A Teacher's Guide to Compost Activities 
14 ACTIVITIES and 68 Pages of Lessons and Activities for Different Grade Levels

VIDEO: YOUTUBE: PEPPA PIG-COMPOST
               Make the Most of Compost - SciShow Kids

LESSON 3: WORMS
Worms are an important part to healthy soil in our garden. In this lesson students will learn how worms are beneficial and essential to the soil through literature and videos and get hands on investigation and observation of live earthworms. Data and observations will be recorded by students.

WORMS LESSON PLAN

Additonal Lesson Plan - How do earthworms live?

VIDEOS:
Worm • I'm a Creepy Crawly-Monster Kids Channel
Worms are Wonderful - SciShowKids

LESSON 4: SEEDS
Seeds, Seeds, Seeds! Seeds come in all shapes and sizes and grow all different kinds of plants. Students will investigate seeds of variety of shapes sizes and types, compare/contrast seeds, identify the parts of a seed. 

SEEDS LESSON PLAN

LESSON 5: MAKE A GARDEN PLAN
Students will explore the difference between cool weather crops and warm weather crops to determine what to plant when in the school garden. Students and teachers will create a planting diagram for the raised garden bed.

Cool Season Vegetable Survey Lesson

LET'S PLAN OUR GARDEN- LESSON PLAN

Alabama Cooperative Extension Planting Guide: Gives Planting Dates, Days to Maturity/Harvest, and Spacing for most vegetables. This is a great resource to know when things can be planted.

EXAMPLE OF A CLASS GARDEN PLANTING GUIDE/LAYOUT


LESSON 6: GERMINATION
Students observe germination by germinating seeds in a bag and planting seeds in a cups that will later be transplanted in the garden, learn how a seed becomes a plant, make predictions and gather data on germination rates of the different seeds.

GERMINATION LESSON PLAN

Seed Growth Recording Sheet

Additional Germination Activity Idea

Videos
How Does A Seed Become A Plant? -SciShow Kids 
Peep and the Big Wide World: Peep Plants a Seed

 

 

 

LESSON 7: Parts of a Plants and

What Plants need to Grow

In this lesson students will explore more about the plants their seeds will become. Students will learn the parts of a plant (roots, stem, leaves, flower, etc) and what a plant needs to grow (light, soil, food, water) and learn about the process of Photosynthesis.

 

PLANTS LESSON

 

 

 

Additional Lessons:

Explore how plants stems transplant water to the plant with this celery stalk experiment from Growing-Minds.org

 

 

 

LESSON 8: Planting Day

 

It's is time to get those plants and seeds in the garden! Cold-Hardy vegetable can be planted as early as late February through March and April. Warm Weather crops should be planted after April 15th or after danger of frost has passed.

 

Granny's Garden School - Planting a Salad Lesson Plan

 

Consult Alabama Cooperative Extension Planting Guide: Gives Planting Dates, Days to Maturity/Harvest, and Spacing for most vegetables. For proper planting dates

 

LESSON 9: Garden Journaling

This is an ongoing lesson for students to document their scientific observations and predictions during the school garden project.

 

LESSON 10: Bees

Honey Bees one of the most important pollinators and they give us yummy honey!

 

Scholastic has a great 4 part Lesson on Honey Bees. In this unit:

Students learn what nectar, honey, and pollen are; where they come from; and how bees and flowers share a mutually beneficial relationship

Students learn the Latin name for the honey bee; about its life stages; and about honey bee anatomy

Students learn about honey bee society, and the role of the queen bee, the worker bee, and the drone

Students learn about hive construction and how honey bees dance to communicate

Students become familiar with a U.S. map and understand basic map elements, such as states and borders, state capitals, regions of the U.S., and how to use a map’s scale—while locating states where honey bee pollination is highest

 

GET THE BUZZ ON HONEY BEES from Scholastic

 

 

 

 

 

LESSON 11: Butterfly Life Cycle

Butterflies are beautiful pollinators in our garden! In this lesson students will learn about the life cycle of butterflies.

 

BUTTERFLY LIFE CYCLES ALEX LESSON PLAN

 

 

LESSON 12: Critters in the Garden

A Rolly Poly Investigation

Kids love a Rolly Poly also known as a Pillbug. In this lesson students will get hands on observation of pillbugs, their habitat,learn how they are one of the many decomposers in the garden, and even have a rolly-poly race. Students will also be surprised to learn the pill bug is NOT an INSECT! Rather from the Crustacean Family.

Rolly-Poly Lesson Plan

 

 

LESSON 13: Edible Plant Parts Roots and Leaves, Fruit and Seed

We get many of our foods from plants. For some plants we eat the leaves, some plants we eat the roots. Other plants give us tasty fruits or seeds. In this lesson students will compare and contrast the edible parts of different plants.

 

EDIBLE PLANTS LESSON PLAN

 

 .

LESSON 14: Harvest Time

With some time and patience finally we have crops ready to harvest. As we learned in earlier lessons different crops mature at different rates. So harvesting may happen more than once. In this lesson Students will learn how to properly harvest, wash, and prepare crops from the school garden. 

 

Granny's Garden School - Harvest a Salad Lesson Plan

 

LESSON 15: Garden Experience Reflection

As all good gardeners do we will reflect in our journals on our successes and failures and make a plan of how to be better gardeners in the future.