Task Description: Students explore the concept of addition and subtraction combining and dividing seeds in a pot. Students pretend to be busy gardeners, adding seeds to the pot to plant and grow, or hungry birds, swooping down from high above to subtract seeds from the pot to eat. Students will explore plants, including their attributes and growth cycle, over the course of one month or longer. This interdisciplinary unit on plants consists of 4 sequence learning plans. Each activity or learning plan works best with a small group of 4-5 students, in centers, over the course of one week. Duration of student engagement in tasks will vary, but the recommendation for each activity is 20 minutes or less. This Common Core-aligned task for mathematics is to be used in correlation with the Common Core-aligned task for literacy, Plants Are All Around Us.

The curriculum section provides over one hundred garden-based lessons to create, expand, and sustain garden-based learning experiences. It offers practical ideas and resources for every level of garden-based learning from sprouting seeds to understanding the food system.

This curriculum section was compiled by the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Garden-Based Learning Workgroup. The content for this section was borrowed, with permission, from various resources. It was our goal to use existing resources as not to “recreate the wheel” and to give a broad example of the garden-based learning resources that are currently in print.

The section is divided into 12 theme areas with applications for primary and upper grade level students.

A picture guide to easy vegetable growing.

In this task you will learn a vocabulary related to gardening. You will listen to several audio segments which you will need to match with the correct drawing (the drawings show activities you do in the garden, vegetables or flowers). You will also look at a garden calendar and answer a number of questions about it.

Students learn about the advantages and disadvantages of the greenhouse effect. They construct their own miniature greenhouses and explore how their designs take advantage of heat transfer processes to create controlled environments. They record and graph measurements, comparing the greenhouse indoor and outdoor temperatures over time. Students are also introduced to global issues such as greenhouse gas emissions and their relationship to global warming.

Chrissa Carlson, the Garden and Nutrition Educator at Baltimore's Hampstead Hill Academy, shows us the steps needed to start a school garden. In Part 1 of this 2-part series, Chrissa shares her school garden knowledge and experience with UME's Jon Traunfeld. Part 2 (http://www.growit.umd.edu/FoodGardeningVideos/Video%20-%20SchoolGardeningPt2.cfm) will cover "Components of a Successful School Garden" and garden design.

Over the past 35 years, instructors at the University of California, Santa Cruz have taught organic farming and gardening skills to more than a thousand apprentices through the UCSC Farm & Garden Apprenticeship program. Teaching Organic Farming & Gardening: Resources for Instructors is their 600-page manual and covers practical aspects of organic farming and gardening, applied soil science, and social and environmental issues in agriculture. Units contain lecture outlines for instructors and detailed lecture outlines for students, field and laboratory demonstrations, assessment questions, and annotated resource lists. Although much of the material has been developed for field or garden demonstrations and skill building, most of the units can also be tailored to a classroom setting.

The training manual is designed for a wide audience of those involved in teaching farming and gardening, including colleges and universities with programs in sustainable agriculture, student farms or gardens, and on-farm education programs; urban agriculture, community garden, and farm training programs; farms with internships or apprenticeships; agriculture extension stations; school gardening programs; organizations such as the Peace Corps, US AID, and other groups that provide international training in food growing and ecological growing methods; and master gardener programs.

Published by the UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, the 600-page manual covers practical aspects of organic farming and gardening, applied soil science, and social and environmental issues in agriculture. Units contain lecture outlines for instructors and detailed lecture outlines for students, field and laboratory demonstrations, assessment questions, and annotated resource lists. Although much of the material has been developed for field or garden demonstrations and skill building, most of the units can also be tailored to a classroom setting.

The training manual is designed for a wide audience of those involved in teaching farming and gardening, including colleges and universities with programs in sustainable agriculture, student farms or gardens, and on-farm education programs; urban agriculture, community garden, and farm training programs; farms with internships or apprenticeships; agriculture extension stations; school gardening programs; organizations such as the Peace Corps, US AID, and other groups that provide international training in food growing and ecological growing methods; and master gardener programs.