Tips for Starting a School Garden

Creating a school garden with Preschoolers with 10 Easy Steps. Read how to set up your preschool garden for opportunities for learning outdoors with kids.

Gardens are a great way to integrate social and academic learning into practical life, and everyday activity. There is so much potential in a garden classroom.

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Guest Post: Dayna is here as a guest writer to showcase some of these school garden learning activities and advice for starting up and maintaining a school garden. She is an enthusiastic, hands-on parent who shares her natural living, homeschooling and sensory play ideas at Lemon Lime Adventures.

School Garden Learning Activities

I am so excited to be part of the Gardening Team for Kids in the Garden at The Educator’s Spin On It. As an early childhood educator for 12 years, I have always loved gardening with children. It is one of my favorite parts of the year. A few years ago, I had the pleasure of creating a Preschool Garden with my co-teacher at our urban public school. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I had in all my 12 years of teaching and I hope to encourage you to try starting a preschool garden with these 10 tips.

Tip One: Build Children’s Background Knowledge

• Read nature books
• Go on nature walks
• Do seed explorations
• Sort flowers by colors

Tip Two: Plan the Garden with the Children

• Use graphs and picture charts to chart ideas for the garden (Favorite flowers, Favorite colors, Favorite vegetables, etc)
• Have children create lists of materials needed
• Encourage drawings and labels of what the children want the garden to look like

Tip Three: Involve the Parents and Community

• Have children make posters and letters asking for help
• Create a sign-up for jobs parents/community members can help with
• Ask for donations of plants, materials, tools to borrow, and even snacks

Tip Four: Prepare Your Materials Ahead of Time

• Borrow and collect as many tools as you can get
• Kid-sized gloves, shovels, rakes, and watering cans
• Weed and clean out your space ahead of time
• Have snacks and water prepared for the children and volunteers

Tip Five: Take Children on a Field Trip to Purchase the Plants (if possible)

• Let children pick their favorite colors
• Gather a variety of seeds
• Plan to plant a variety of sensory plants
• Wagons are extremely helpful for gathering materials.

Tip Six: Involve the children

• Allow the children to do the “jobs”
• Have enough materials to keep everyone busy
• Make sure you have “activities” for those that aren’t interested in planting

Tip Seven: Allow time for Explorations

• Highlight when worms are found
• Discuss the different bugs
• Let children explore the tools in open dirt

Tip Eight: Remember Not All Children Will “Plant”

• Gardening can be great for sensory input
• Some children might just enjoy digging
• Deep holes can be great for sensory needs

Tip Nine: Plan for the Future Care

• Make sure school staff is on board and willing to help on the weekends
• Create a schedule/sign-up for community and parent volunteers to help water and weed
• Plan extension lessons in the garden (journaling, measuring, science observations, etc)
• Remember it will take some time before your garden is full and lush.

Tip Ten: Have Fun!

I can’t stress enough how much fun a Preschool Garden can be. It can provide you and your preschoolers with so much fun while learning at the same time. From outside reading time to science experiments… The possibilities are endless!

Free School Garden Printables

Don’t forget to visit Lemon Lime Adventures for her FREE garden printables.

Want More Gardening Learning Fun?

Sensory Benefits of Gardening with Kids
Wiggly Worms: A Garden Science Activity
Checklists and Printables for Gardening with Kids

Dayna is a National Board Certified teacher with over 12 years of experience in the primary classroom. She writes at Lemon Lime Adventures, where she writes about the trials and errors of their life, life living as a blended family, and dealing with a son with Sensory Processing Disorder.

You can find Dayna rockin’ it over on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

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