Building a Sustainable Community through Kids Edible Gardens
Initially organised for the beginning of the year to kick start our focus on Sustainable Communities, it was great to finally see this workshop take place in term 4. Tamanuitera shone, though Tawhirimatea made his presence known, and we were able to start in the Kids Edible Gardens of Blenheim School talking about some of the companion plants we could see growing and nibbling on the new leaves of the prolific broad beans.
Identify
Getting down to the nitty gritty we identified what a Sustainable Community could look like. We found that in building a Sustainable Community we are also building our hauora as we connect with nature and foster relationships with people around us.
Explore
Kids Edible Gardens is a great vehicle for creating community at school. Specific ways of how this is done were explored. Such as shared discovery and cooperative learning happen through garden activities. Students connect with each other as well as the environment becoming appreciative of nature and taking responsibility for its care.
Action
Taking action, we delved into the Kids Edible Gardens Teacher Padlet. The focus was on two lesson plans that could be used to explore Sustainable Communities with your students. while supporting the work of your facilitator in the garden.
Reflect
We then reflected on how Kids Edible Gardens could compliment and work alongside other programmes running in your schools.
Interested in learning more, workshop notes can be found on the Padlet.
https://padlet.com/EnviroschoolsMarlborough/kegsteachers
Angela is available to run mini workshops with your teaching team. They could include, how to weave Kids Edible Gardens into your inquiry topics. Maybe exploring more of the lesson plans in the Padlet or digging deeper into a gardening topic would be useful, please let her know how she can help.