Kindergarten

The gardens themselves are the cornerstone of the Kathryn Winn Environmental Gardens; however, the program has additional facets as well. A cafeteria recycling program that has grown into a school-wide recycling movement is a complementary piece, beginning with the simple goal of collecting paper to recycle and now including recycling initiatives to collect paper products, milk cartons from the cafeteria, plastic wrappers, aluminum products, and food scraps. The food scraps from the cafeteria are composted using a vermicomposting system located by the gardens.

The goal of the garden is primarily twofold. First, the students would learn from where plant-based, whole food comes. The reality for many of our students is that they consume pre-packaged, processed foods on a daily basis. At a young age, we want to instill in our students that good, healthy food comes from the earth. We would love for students to be able to see the stages of food growth and care for the plants. Secondly, as a by product of learning about how food is grown, we want to teach our students responsibility.

Our garden's goal is very simple: to provide a hands-on experience for all of our students (from the preschool to the grade 8 students) and to help introduce them to the concept of farming in town, to provide them with a place to gather outside and discover how to grow your own food. The garden will provide fresh produce to serve a salad bar for our students in May, June and September and will help a few different families in need every summer.

Our long-term goal is to have our students help plant, maintain and harvest vegetables throughout the school year. Depending on the amount of vegetables we harvest, we hope to serve them in our school cafeteria for student lunches. In addition, we plan to sell the harvested vegetables to our school community when we have other events in the school, i.e. evening band concerts or open houses.