Feeding the SoilGardening at School Lesson Plan, Level: K-2

Literature Connections

Eddie’s Garden: How to Make Things Growby Sarah Garland

MaterialsStation 1: Outside in the garden2 bags mushroom compost1 bag Nature’s Helper2 bags Black Kow manure5-6 trowels 5-6 small buckets1 large shovelOptional: Soil testing boxes (from your local Cooperative Extension office)

Station 2: Garden Stories Dry place for children to sitOne or two suggested children’s books

Station 3: Journal Time Garden journals (each student should have one)Pencils--graphite and colored pencils

Steps with the StudentsPrepare to Go to the GardenAsk the class if they can remember some of the class garden rules. (If you haven’t devel-oped garden rules, lead your students in coming up with guidelines for things to do or not to do in the garden). Remind the students that being in the garden requires them to be calm, careful observers, and to work together. Ask the students to take several deep breaths to help them feel calm and focused.

Introduce the LessonReview what conditions plants need to survive, allowing students to come up with an-swers. Record their answers on the board. Emphasize that plants need food or nutrients and healthy soil to live. Ask students, “What is healthy soil?” “What does it look like, smell like, feel like? Why is healthy soil important to plants?” Healthy soil is moist and contains food and nutrients for the plants and also for all of the insects, bacteria and fungi (the little guys we can’t see), and worms that help the plants grow. Healthy soil helps roots to expand and thrive, and the happier the roots, the happier the plant! It’s up to gardeners to build the nutrients in the soil and to create healthy, living soil so that plants can thrive. How do students think we can make healthy soil? Can they brain-storm healthy soil ingredients? Explain that to make healthy soil we have to add differ-ent kinds of materials to the garden beds and that is what the class will be doing in the garden today. Divide the students into three groups and allow them to rotate through the stations described below.

Instructions and matrials quantities are written for a class of approximately 20 children. Garden lessons include 3 stations that children rotate through in order to experience the garden activities in smaller groups.

Growing Minds is a program of ASAP (Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project) 306 West Haywood Street, Asheville, NC 28801

www.Growing-Minds.org

First Peas to the Table: by Susan Grigsby

Garbage Helps Our Garden Growby Linda Glaser

Water Weed and Waitby Edith Hope Fine

Station One: Get Gardening (15 minutes)Show students the bags of soil amendments. Explain that we need all three (Nature’s Helper, Black Kow, and Mushroom Compost) to create healthy soil with lots of nutrients and organic matter for the organisms, bacteria and worms that live in soil and help plants grow. Open the bags of amend-ments and guide the students in filling small buckets with each of the amendments and dumping them on top of the garden bed. (This lesson is appropriate when the garden bed is empty, usually in January or February). With their trowels, students should mix the amendments deeply into the garden bed.

Station Two: Literature Connections (15 minutes)Choose one or two of the recommended children’s books to read to the class. What connections can you help students make between the book and the day’s activity? What did the students learn about gardening through the book?

Station Three: Garden Journals (15 minutes)Guide students in using their journals to capture something new they see or sense in the garden. The students can write words or sentences about the garden or a specific aspect of the garden. They can draw something they see or feel while they are in the garden, or they can collect small things from the garden and put them in their journal envelop or tape or glue them to their page. A garden journal should encourage creativity!

More Soil Activities

Soil Exploration Take students to the garden and give them each a trowel and a piece of newspaper. Ask them to help with gardening by becoming soil scientists. Prompt students to separate and spread out in the garden. Tell them to dig one shovel full of soil and spread it out onto their paper. What do they see? Insects, worms, leaves, rocks, sand? Ask them to record their observa-tions in their garden journals. For a full lesson plan on soil exploration, visit: www.growing-minds.org.

Make a Worm Farm Use basic materials such as tupper ware bins and newspa-per to make a worm farm for your class. Students will be able to see worms turn food scraps into healthy soil! Google “worm bins” for more information.

Did you know. . .

Soil is much like the earth’s peel, similar to an apple peel.

Without soil, plants wouldn’t be able to grow and animals wouldn’t have any food.

Top soil (our healthiest soil) is a precious, valuable resource. It takes five hundred years to form two centimeters of topsoil.

Compost is the primary and most important source of food for healthy soils.

In one gram of soil, the number of bacteria ranges from 100,000 to several billion.

About 42 centuries ago, the Chinese used a soil map to de-termine taxation amounts.

Soil develops from geologic materials such as rocks, glacial deposits, granite, limestone, and stream sediments.

Note: Gardeners often add unbagged compost or amendments such as manure to their garden. In the school setting, we suggest always adding bagged materials to ensure a traceable source of amendments should food safety issues arise.

Keeping garden journals helps students practice observation, reflection, and writing skills. Journals can be blank or lined, bought or made.