Creative ways to use the garden to inspire learning, for kids ages 4-8 Packed with garden-based activities that promote science, math, reading, writing, imaginative play, and arts and crafts, The Garden Classroom offers a whole year of outdoor play and learning ideas—however big or small your garden. Every garden offers children a rich, sensory playground, full of interesting things to discover and learn about. There's a whole lot of science happening right before their eyes. The garden can also be a place to develop math and literacy skills, as the outdoors offers up plenty of invitations to weave learning into everyday gardening. The garden classroom is a place where plants grow, and where children grow too.

At Play in the Garden of Stitch provides ways to think about how thread and fabric can bring depth to composition, texture to emotions and line to ideas. Kovarik has won numerous awards for her densely machine-stitched art in which the quilting line is used to draw intricate patterns and pictures. Simple exercises encourage the reader to approach each day with a curious mind willing to make a mess of expectations, embrace the wonky by letting the thread lead, and think in thread while making careful observations of the world. Heavily illustrated with examples and finished art the book provides quilters and artists with new ways to approach this medium.

A collection of garden related games, crafts and educational activities.

“McCanna's superb scansion never misses...Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful.” —Kirkus Reviews Acclaimed author Tim McCanna celebrates gardens, nature, and all sorts of critters in this delightful and vibrant read-aloud picture book. In the earth a single seed sits beside a millipede worms and termites dig and toil moving through the garden soil How does a garden grow? Follow along from seed to sprout to bud to flower as a garden blooms. Worms, ladybugs, millipedes, and more help a garden grow each season. Tim McCanna’s gorgeous, rhyming text, combined with Aimée Sicuro’s stunning illustrations make this charming picture book as informative as it is fun to read aloud. Bonus backmatter features tons of cool facts about ecosystems and the symbiosis between plants and bugs.

Offering a fresh approach to bringing life to schools and schools to life, this book goes beyond touting the benefits of learning gardens to survey them as a whole-systems design solution with potential to address myriad interrelated social, ecological, and educational issues. The theoretical and conceptual framework presented creatively places soil at the center of the discourse on sustainability education and learning garden design and pedagogy. Seven elements and attributes of living soil and learning gardens are presented as a guide for sustainability education: cultivating a sense of place; fostering curiosity and wonder; discovering rhythm and scale; valuing biocultural diversity; embracing practical experience ; nurturing interconnectedness. The living soil of learning gardens forms the basis of a new metaphoric language serving to contest dominant mechanistic metaphors presently influencing educational discourse. Student voices and examples from urban schools provide practical understanding of how bringing life to schools can indeed bring schools to life.

A refreshing source of ideas to help your children learn to grow their own patch of earth, Gardening Lab for Kids encourages children to get outside and enjoy nature. This fun and creative book features 52 plant-related activities set into weekly lessons, beginning with learning to read maps to find your heat zone, moving through seeds, soil, composting, and then creating garden art and appreciating your natural surroundings.DIV /divDIVAuthor Renata Fossen Brown guides your family through fun opportunities learning about botany, ecology, the seasons, food, patience, insects, eating, and cooking. The labs can be used as singular projects or to build up to a year of hands-on outdoor experiences. The lessons in this book are open-ended to be explored over and over–with different results each time! Garden Lab for Kids is the perfect book for creative families, friends, and community groups and works as lesson plans for both experienced and new gardeners. Children of all ages and experience levels can be guided by adults and will enjoy these engaging exercises./divSo, slip on your muddy clothes, and get out and grow!

Sow the seeds of science and wonder and inspire the next generation of Earth stewards The School Garden Curriculum offers a unique and comprehensive framework, enabling students to grow their knowledge throughout the school year and build on it from kindergarten to eighth grade. From seasonal garden activities to inquiry projects and science-skill building, children will develop organic gardening solutions, a positive land ethic, systems thinking, and instincts for ecological stewardship. The world needs young people to grow into strong, scientifically literate environmental stewards. Learning gardens are great places to build this knowledge, yet until now there has been a lack of a multi-grade curriculum for school-wide teaching aimed at fostering a connection with the Earth. The book offers: A complete K-8 school-wide framework Over 200 engaging, weekly lesson plans – ready to share Place-based activities, immersive learning, and hands-on activities Integration of science, critical thinking, permaculture, and life skills Links to Next Generation Science Standards Further resources and information sources. A model and guide for all educators, The School Garden Curriculum is the complete package for any school wishing to use ecosystem perspectives, science, and permaculture to connect children to positive land ethics, personal responsibility, and wonder, while building vital lifelong skills. AWARDS FINALIST | 2019 Foreword INDIES: Education