Garden Dreams

1. Invite children to share their experiences with gardens. Brainstorm a list of favorite foods that can be grown in gardens and on farms. Share garden plans from gardeners in your school community or from the Internet. Talk about how gardeners plan their gardens.
2. Introduce the design principle of scale as a way of mapping and diagraming measured distances and regions. Demonstrate how you might diagram a garden using the scale of 1 inch: 1 foot. Ask children to think of other scale ratios they might use to create a garden plan.
3. Provide Crayola® Crayons, white paper, and rulers for children to use to create their own dream garden plans. Encourage children to consider creating a path in their plans so they would be able to access all of their crops. Offer books and the Internet as resources for researching plant shapes and inspiring garden designs.
4. Tips and techniques to suggest to students include: Use Crayola Erasable Colored Pencils to pre-plan your design. Include the scale somewhere in the design. Use Crayola Crayons to draw symbolic shapes and color each region of the garden. Label each area of the garden with bright, contrasting colors. Layer color over color to give your design more depth.

LA: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade level topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

MATH: Understand ratio concepts and use ratio reasoning to solve problems.

MATH: Analyze proportional relationships and use them to solve real-world and mathematical problems.

VA: Students will investigate, plan and work through materials and ideas to make works of art and design.

VA: Students demonstrate an understanding that creative thinking and art making skills transfer to many aspects of life.

Ask parent volunteers to donate fruits and vegetables for a taste-testing event to inspire children to include a variety of flavorful foods in their garden plans.

Visit a local community garden to see how plants are laid out in rows and areas. Provide clipboards, paper, and colored pencils for students to draw maps of the garden. Use measuring tools to create maps to scale.

Plan a school garden. Locate a sunny area on the school property. Measure the area then invite teams of students to work collaboratively to design school garden plans. Create evaluation criteria as a whole group then invite students in other classes to rate each design. Choose one design and get gardening!

Great books to enjoy include: Rocks, Dirt, Worms and Weeds by Jeff Hutton Roots, Shoots, Buckets, and Boots by Sharon Lovejoy Green Thumbs by Laurie M. Carlson