School Zone
School gardening supports many government priorities like sustainability, healthy eating, food in schools and Eco schools.
Contact with the natural world can also be wonderfully nurturing for children, as they make connections with natural environment, learn about the cyclic nature of the seasons, and begin to find out more about where their food comes from. It is often the children who find it hard to engage in the classroom, who really come into their own and are able to shine in the physical activity of the outdoors.
There are a whole myriad of ways in which the national curriculum can be delivered through school gardening. Here we give you just a flavour of what’s possible and include some useful links to more resources.
| Area of National Curriculum | Examples of Gardening Based Activities |
|---|---|
| English | Reading & writing seasonal stories and poems Making a gardening scrap book Producing a school garden newsletter |
| Mathematics | Counting seeds, plants, flowers per plant etc Using fractions & percentages i.e. Number of seeds that germinate Measuring plant heights Collecting rainfall measurements |
| Science | Investigating what plants need in order to grow Observing the life cycle of a plant Watching and recording changes in the garden through the seasons Creating habitats for wildlife and watching the results Making weather observations through the seasons |
| Geography | Studying the water cycle Making scale drawings and maps of the garden |
| Information & Communication Technology | Inputting data into the computer to produce graphs and charts Investigating topics on the internet Uploading gardening news onto the schools website |
| PSHE & Citizenship | Carry out sustainable activities i.e. rainwater collection, composting, recycling Develop community involvement in the gardening activity Carry out activities in teams with individuals having specific roles |
| Food Technology | Harvesting food and learning how to cook it Discovering which foods can be eaten raw - peas from the pod etc |
| Art & Design | Making collages using natural materials Taking inspiration from the outdoors for drawing & painting projects Creating posters to publicise the garden for fundraising Photographing the gardening year |
| Physical Education | Getting exercise in the great outdoors Learning about fruit and vegetables and healthy eating |
| History | Study of plants and their uses historically for eating, medicine, making dyes etc Studies of gardening through history, i.e. dig for victory campaign |