Vision

Our vision for this project was to give our students more authentic and meaningful opportunities to learn outdoors. We know that being outside is supportive of students’ social and emotional needs and promotes positive mental health. All of our students are learning English as an additional language, and we also know that experiential learning is a key way to promote language development. We sought out the LSF funding as a catalyst to create an outdoor learning space for our school.

Action

For our project, we focused on pollinator plants and food crops with quick harvest times. With this funding, we were able to purchase a garden box, 3 bags of soil, and over 30 plants. After building and mapping out our garden, we realized we had a lot of plants and not a lot of space, so we were able to use our remaining funding to purchase an additional garden box.

All of the students at our school at learning English as an additional language. A key strategy for developing language is experiential learning; this means that students are engaged in an authentic activity, not just reading or hearing our viewing of the activity. The kindergarten team has been trying to figure out how to get a garden space in our school for some time now, so when we heard about the LSF funding, we eagerly applied!

Through this project, our 73 kindergarten students all were able to help get our garden box ready by adding soil and compost (decomposing leaves and plants) gathered from the outdoors. While scooping up the organic matter, students marvelled at how good it smelled! They enjoyed exploring the decomposers living in the organic matter and learned about their role in our world. They demonstrated care for them as they gently handled and observed them in our garden box. They also used their senses to compare the dirt in our school yard with the soil in our box; they noticed the dirt was grey, lightweight, hard and dusty, whereas the soil was brown, heavy, and soft. We talked about how the plants need rich soil to grow as that is where they get their nutrients and vitamins from.

Once the garden box was full of soil and compost, our students helped plant a variety of plants. We planted food crops such as rhubarb, cucumber, zucchini, strawberries, mint, lemon thyme, and dill. We planted pollinator flowers such as zinnias, snapdragons, and nasturtium. They learned about the space plants need to grow and compared plants growing too big for their pots to themselves growing too big for their clothes. We observed the plants’ roots, touched the soft leaves of lamb’s ear and the spikey stems of cucumber and zucchini, and smelled the fragrant mint and lemon thyme. When the vegetables and fruits are ready, our students will taste their crops. We discussed how farmers and gardeners grow food for our communities.

Reflection & Celebration

While gardening, we observed how readily our students began to engage in exploration and inquiry without any prompting. They were unafraid to get their hands dirty and see what they could find in the garden box as we readied it for planting. Students sporadically and authentically engaged in oral language through openly wondering, making observations, and asking questions. They eagerly accepted new vocabulary to help them identify what they were seeing. Words like sow bugs, soil, nutrients, space, and decomposing were more readily acquired through this project.

Many of the plants we chose are perennials that will continue to grow for our learning and exploration. All of the flowers we chose will produce seeds that we can harvest to continue growing. With the additional garden box, we will continue adding more plant species to our garden. This project will continue to serve our students for years to come. Thank you sincerely for being the catalyst we needed to get this invaluable outdoor learning space started!