I am currently working as a Garden Coordinator at an elementary and middle school here in Hawai’i. We mainly focus on teaching the kids about the importance of growing our own food, the benefits to connecting to nature, the basic skills of gardening. The kids love getting engaged in planting projects, watching their plants miraculously grow when cared for, and reaping the abundance of hard work.
I formulate lessons based off of “Grow Some Good”‘s curriculum, NextGen Science’s school standards, and my own ideas. A lot of the time I will get inspiration by strolling through the grocery store (quick lessons on starting plants from produce at our local grocery store or picking up seed packets) or just by observing what nature has to present itself that day, or week!
“How To Read A Seed Packet” Lesson:
A quick lesson I gave this week to the elementary school students was on “How To Read A Seed Packet”. I actually had a college class day on this topic.. so might as well start them way earlier! I bought a couple packets of radish seeds and had the class observe them. We discussed what seed packets tell us and why we need to read them before planting. It teaches kids how to plan around their garden spaces and calendar year for optimal plant success. In this lesson, we focused on the “age to maturity” of these radishes – which was around 25 days. This is perfect for us right now because the students will be able to harvest right before their winter break.
“Self-love” Lesson ft. Roses:
Lastly for the middle schoolers, getting engagement has been a little more difficult (they’re at that age). They have really been appreciating food harvests and cooking. Today’s lesson was inspired by my walk into the school’s actual garden space. The rose bush was popping off **stop and smell the roses** and I had the thought of making rose water! I personally like to get witchy in the kitchen and create my own beauty products/herbal concoctions. So.. I created a lesson around the importance of self-love and self-care. We tended to our “inner gardens”, talked about the benefits of rose water, harvested rose petals, and made rose water and mamaki tea. For the rose water, I had the students each pick a rose that they felt reflected themselves.. as we are all beautiful flowers!! Morals of the story – self-care needs to be a daily practice for building our self-love… the most important relationship we have is with ourselves… our gardens often reflect our inner selves… and we can harvest from our garden for our own beauty products or herbal concoctions!
Hope this inspires some and I hope to see comments of more ideas!
Ideas by
Makenna Mecsey
instagram: Makenna Martin Mecsey (@papayasrule) • Instagram photos and videos
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