Garden Classrooms

San Andreas Elementary School

The primary goal of our garden is to promote and support healthy and sustainable lifestyles in our community and school by teaching students and families how to grow and prepare healthy food. More specifically, our goals for the next two years are that: 1. Every student has regular access to the garden 2. Students get to EAT the produce! 3. The garden program is set up to be successful and sustainable.

Coyle School System

Coyle schools fundraised for years to purchase a greenhouse. Our dream is becoming a reality
in December 2014. Our goal is to provide hands-on learning experience for not only the 50
students in our Agricultural Education Courses (AECs) and Future Farmers of America Chapter,
but begin a culture of garden involvement throughout our school of 297 children, many of which are
low-income.
These funds would help to:
● Expand the reach of our garden to students outside of AECs

Leonard Middle School

We have an existing garden we started last year. This grant would make it possible for us to add our 4th L shaped raised bed and fill it with organic matter. We would also like to purchase a wheel barrow. Our students are very excited about the garden and we have used the produce from it to support our school lunch program with fresh vegetables. We learned about what is happening with growing plants, climate, pest and weed control issues. Our Art teacher is using the garden as a vehicle for natural art projects and has created an outdoor learning environment.

Yuba River Charter School

Yuba River Charter School (YRCS) gardens currently serve 30 third graders (3 hrs/week, plus 2 hrs cooking/week) and 60 kindergartners (daily gardening/cooking). The school plans to expand edible programs to serve at least 3 more grades (90 students by Fall '15) as they work with Sierra Harvest to design fully integrated K-8 edible programing for all classes (by Fall '16). Free and reduced lunch rates at YRCS are on the rise--from 31% to 55% since 2010. The challenge to fully integrated edible garden programing at this school is scheduling.

Alta Sierra Elementary School

Our goal this year is to install an on-site garden and orchard. An area that Alta Sierra Elementary lacks is hands-on educational opportunities. By planting a garden, our students will be directly involved in a curriculum that encompasses science, nutrition, and community. Lessons and activities will be customized for each grade level, and include the care and cultivation of the garden, as well as the nutritional and environmental benefits of growing food. The idea and initial planning and work thus far, has created an excitement and camaraderie among our students, parents, and staff.

Slackwood Elementary School

We believe planting a new school garden at Slackwood Elementary School is a wonderful way to use our playground as a classroom, connect students with the outside world and the true source of their food, and teach them valuable gardening and agriculture concepts and skills that integrate with several subjects, including math, science, art, health and physical education, and social studies, as well as teach them about personal and social responsibility. Specifically, our goals are to:

Arthur D. Healey School

Our goal is to expand opportunities for more students to do real hands-on work in the school garden. Using tools, understanding how to plant, care for and harvest produce, and preparing, tasting and sharing their produce can promote independent thinking and problem-solving, shared responsibility for their school, team work, and instill a lifelong interest in learning about and caring for living things and their environment.

Barrie School

We need gardening! It has no class, age, race, or physical boundaries. We wish to empower all children to think of gardening as a skill they can do and share.
Our goals are to educate our students and our families about:
• where our food comes from and different growing methods – organic, traditional, modern;
• developing lifelong eating habits that are both healthy and tasty;
• environmental stewardship;
• interconnections with math, science, art and language ;

A.D. Rundle

A.D. Rundle's garden will grow healthy vegetables, community, curriculum, outdoor experiences, working together, social skills, non-verbal communication, education around nature, and experiences in play not isolated to metal, rubber, and plastic structures. Children have little time for free play anymore, and when children do have free time, it's often spent inside in front of television or computers. School facility playgrounds are often the only outdoor activities that many young children experience, and we hope to improve that by adding more natural space to our school.

Canon Exploratory

Our garden will serve as both a community garden for a nearby low income housing unit, a residential home for adults with special needs and an outdoor classroom for our K-7th grade students. Our students will learn through real world application as they design, plan, cultivate, plant, and tend the garden. We plan to build raised beds that will be filled with vegetables, fruits and edible flowers. Although, the garden will serve as an outdoor learning space for the entire school, the installation of the garden will be a 7th grade project.

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