Garden Classrooms

Vance Village Elementary School

Our program will be called HANDS in the Kitchen Garden. HANDS is an acronym for Health and Nutrition Discovery Science. We are an urban school committed to providing real world experiential learning for our students. The schools Green Team is committed to changing the culture of the schools current eating habits through hands-on nutrition and culinary education, as well as, integrating other subject areas.This grant will allow us to build an outdoor kitchen and education space in the existing garden to be utilized by every grade level.

Estes Park Elementary School

A school garden within the new Estes Valley Community Garden will allow children to develop a meaningful connection to the food they eat. It will support virtually every area of the elementary school curriculum, infusing the study of plants and nature with a sense of relevance and wonder. It will provide opportunities for children to learn outdoors in spring and fall, and support healthy eating habits by making locally grown plant-based foods an appealing and real thing.

Templeton Elementary School

The Little Green Thumbs Garden goal is to have a fun, sustainable, student-centered learning environment that reinforces academic concepts that are taught in the classroom. We also want students to learn the importance of helping others and the environment by growing their own food in a garden. Our garden is divided into different areas, including planter boxes, and outdoor classroom, a courtyard, a composting station, a greenhouse, and a tool storage area.

Dianne Feinstein Elementary School

We have three main goals for our school garden. We aim to create a connection to healthy food, teach science lessons outside and cultivate stewardship ethic for our students.

Augusta Circle Elementary School

Augusta Circle’s “CATCH Patch” gives students the opportunity to experience hands-on learning using the garden as a cross-curriculum teaching tool, while at the same time emphasizing the importance of fruits and vegetables to healthy life choices. Augusta Circle was an early adopter of the Coordinated Approach to Child Health (CATCH), which transformed our cafeteria offerings and has helped students better understand the difference between “go,” “slow,” and “whoa” foods, while emphasizing exercise and physical activity.

Monroe Elementary

The garden at Monroe Elementary is a project that students, teachers, and community alike, have taken ownership of. It is our plan to continue to make improvements to our garden to ensure that it endures for future classrooms at Monroe to enjoy and learn from. One major component of the vision for the garden that has not yet been realized is to provide an irrigation system. Currently Monroe is the only Santa Barbara School District school participating in the Explore Ecology Garden Program that does not have a drip irrigation system.

PS 84 Lillian Weber

The WITS Tower Garden will be the primary feature of the WITS Green for Kids program, with the goal of increasing environmental awareness and develop sustainable practices in public schools. Because the Tower Gardens are mobile, students can connect to nature anywhere in their school, year-round. The Tower Gardens will be featured in the WITS Green Labs, hands-on educational classes on sustainability topics; used to support the WITS Culinary Labs; and also made available to teachers for use in their curricula.

LaGrange Highlands Elementary School

Our goal is to provide an outdoor learning environment for our students. This project will be a real world, authentic, ongoing program. Students are currently evaluating garden sites for the best place for a garden. They are listing pros and cons for each, including water source, adequate sunlight and space, and room to grow. Students will plant seeds and take care of plants, research, keep plant diaries, collect data, teach others about our garden and conduct experiments on plants. We will start with 10 raised beds.

Blackburn Laboratory Middle School

Rather than a simple beautification project, the Community Learning Garden and Outdoor Classroom is intended to provide curricular support for BLMS faculty, and hands-on learning opportunities for students. In addition to supporting standard general education subject areas, the garden will provide educational programming focused on nutrition and healthy lifestyles, as well as environmental sustainability.

Gerard Elementary School

This project is a unique collaboration between Gerard Elementary School and Hill College (a 2-year college). Biology students from Hill will assist the elementary students in installing and maintaining raised bed gardens on the Gerard campus, while also teaching them how to use available recycled items such as pallets, cardboard, newspaper, and trash cans in order to create gardens, compost bins, and rain barrels. Hill students will also create guidance books for each plant, teaching organic methods for weed and pest control, planting, and fertilizing.

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