Lower Elementary

The goal of the Bayview Community Garden is to first and foremost, to enhance student learning through a hands-on experience. The garden provides the opportunity to move the focus from simply consuming produce, to planning, creating and cultivating it in a collaborative method. It allows students to interact fully in and with their physical environment outside the classroom integrating curriculum. Students will be able to explore and incorporated more vegetables in their diet through tasting and trying.

The goals of the garden consist of creating an environment where students and communities can leaned and work together. The focus of the garden will be (a) educating children of how plants grow (b) knowing the importance of growing foods and vegetables, (c) having an environment where the children can have actual hands -on experience of creating and developing a successful school garden.

This grant will allow us to purchase the materials needed to create a garden, provide an educational opportunity for children while fostering an atmosphere of positive socialization.

Our first goal is to get an existing greenhouse at the school up and running. Since being built, the green house area has been too hot to successfully grow plants. Master gardeners, a local CSA farmer, and the owner of the area garden nursery have all made suggestions of ways to correct our greenhouse problems and we are confident with this grant we can purchase the equipment to correct our problems.

Our vision is that the garden be used as a platform to educate children about food literacy. Students can grow food using organic pest control methods, harvest produce, and save seeds. Composting teaches about nutrient cycles. With a cooking program, the children learn proper food prep and use all their senses to discover the goodness of whole foods.