Is the arrival of gardening catalogs inspiring you to dream about planting with your students, and plan a garden of any size? You know that people of all ages benefit from spending time outdoors and that your children were interested in seeds, perhaps in October if you carved a pumpkin, opened a milkweed pod, or cut vegetables to make “Stone Soup.” But how to be sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew, that the garden will be a success and the children will learn concepts that are part of the National Science Education Standards, or your state’s standards?

Let the National Gardening Association do it for you by following the comprehensive gardening curriculum in their new book, Garden Adventures: Exploring Plants with Young Children, by Sarah Pounders. She urges us to start small so initial enthusiasm is not exhausted before the plants mature. I had the pleasure of reviewing an early draft of sections of the book, and I look forward to using the lessons, beginning with the first: “What is a plant?”. The Plant Parts reproducible page of a pea plant will prepare my students for planting peas in February . To attract butterflies, we’ll plant flowers (for nectar), and dill, parsley, milkweed, and cabbage plants (for caterpillar food) in April, or maybe May, depending on the weather!
Garden Adventures has an easy-to-follow layout with basic lessons expanded in the “Digging Deeper” sections, teacher background information, reproducible, and newsletters to send home. Photos of children gardening will show your students that even young children can be gardeners. The list of children’s books includes old favorites—The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter—and some new to me—Whose Garden Is It? by Mary Ann Hoberman. The National Gardening Association’s Kids Gardening website has additional activities and information.
I’ll pair this book with the book Early Sprouts: Cultivating Healthy Food Choices in Young Children by Karrie Kalich, Dottie Bauer, Deirdre McPartlin, from Red Leaf Press, and have the students do some tasting in spring, in anticipation of harvest in the fall.
Peggy