|
 Kids
have such wild imaginations that I wanted to write something
just for them. In 1999 the Square Foot Gardening Foundation donated a garden
to every elementary school in the State of Utah. Part of the project
involved teaching the teachers all about Square Foot Gardening, developing
the curriculum, and then writing a lesson plan. It was geared for 4th
grade science classes, but as I worked on it, I realized that with some
minor adaptations by the teacher, this lesson
plan would work for any age group from 4 to 40 or older (yes, some of
us are still kids at any age). The whole idea of the lesson plan was to
have fun and stretch their imaginations while learning a new way to garden.
Of course most kids never learned the old-fashioned wasteful way of single
rows that their parents learned, so they didn’t have to unlearn before they
learned.
That’s
why kids can pick up the Square Foot Gardening System in just an hour
or so while their parents take anywhere from a day to a lifetime. Some
of them keep saying, “Yeah, but it can’t be that easy. I remember
a lot of hard work and long hours.” But it doesn’t have to be.
Square Foot Gardening is fun, simple, inexpensive, quick, easy and very
productive besides looking terrific, even spectacular. We also wanted
to teach the children to realize that everything they learn in school
will be put to good use later in their lives. For example, learning to
spell and write clearly will improve their gardening pleasures (they will
be able to read the plant markers).
Conversely,
if they realize that a simple hobby like gardening can encompass so
many subjects like science, math, art, literature, language, home economics,
and history, they may see the necessity and advantage of getting a good,
well-rounded education.
Here’s
an example from one of our lesson
plan activities. List the 6 vegetables on page 99 of the Square Foot
Gardening book in alphabetical order (if you don’t have the book, here
they are): onions, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, muskmelons, squash.
- Question
#1 – Which names contain a double letter next to each other?
- Question
#2 – Which names contain double letters, but separated?
- Question
#3 – Do any of the names have triple letters?
For
example, take the name pepper. If we took the singular form
“pepper” – just from the sound of the beginning and the end, we know it
starts with a “p” and ends with an “r.” In the middle it has a double
“p” with an “e” on each side. That’s all there is to it.
It’s
possible that this simple exercise in spelling may help a young student
remember for the rest of their lives the spelling of pepper. Try
the others in the list. For the older student, try asparagus, rutabaga
and zucchini.
We’re
starting a brand new page
just for kids. Incidentally, this is also an excellent activity
for nursing homes or the elderly who probably have gardened all their
lives but still would have fun doing some of the exercises. We’ll
have a new game every week so tell your kids to look up the Square Foot
Gardening web page and see how they do every week.
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