WILLARDS – Teachers are incorporating a new vegetable garden into curriculum at Willards Elementary School.
The garden, tended by school staff, students and their families, is located on school grounds and offers unique learning opportunities that can be incorporated in the classroom and at home.
Mary Lynn Stavley, a kindergarten teacher at Willards Elementary, said she and a few other teachers talked about starting a garden with their students. Although their students would plant seeds each year as part of a “Spring on the Farm” theme, Stavley said the children never saw the vegetables grow.
The teachers’ vision became a reality last year. In addition to being named a certified “green school,” Stavley said Willards Elementary also received $2,500 from “America’s Farmers Grow Communities” – an award sponsored by the Monsanto Fund and donated by Richardson Farms – to build a vegetable garden.
“It tied in perfectly for us to start our own garden,” she said.
Stavley said the teachers worked with the administration to determine the size of the plots and polled the students to determine what vegetables would be planted in the garden.
In the spring, every student at Willards Elementary was given an opportunity to work in the garden, digging holes and planting seeds for tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, green peppers, squash and more.
Over the summer, the school used social media to share when vegetables were ripe and to ask families to help weed the garden. The parents, in return, would post pictures of the vegetables they picked.
“Everyone seemed very excited that this was happening,” Stavley said. “What we really wanted was for the families to be able to have access to healthy foods.”
Stavley said the students were also excited to see the plants grow and produce vegetables.
“Now they see everything starting to sprout and they want to go out there and pick things,” she said.
While in school, Stavley said the garden supplements lessons that are learned in the classroom.
In addition to learning about plant life cycles in class, Stavley said students can also view a plant’s life cycle in the garden, for example.
“Not only can they create models on paper, but they also get to see it happen,” she said.
Stavley explained that students are also learning healthy eating habits.
Ripe vegetables found in the garden are often brought in for snacks and used in recipes that are taught to the students.
Stavley’s class, for example, picked ingredients from the garden last week to make their own salsa.
“It’s nice to hear them say they are trying so many new things,” she said.
Stavley explained that lessons learned from the garden are ultimately brought home to the students’ families.
“It’s just a really cool connection between home and school,” she said.
