Garden Classrooms

The garden grant will give students a hands-on approach with the growing care for and distribution of plants herbs and vegetables. The conversations and experiences will link directly to curriculum and our healthy living goals. Students will help to grow and harvest plants with the help of their families. The end result of crops and vegetables will be donated to a local food pantry which serves our community.

There are many who can benefit from and appreciate the beauty of school gardens but flourishing gardens take years to become well established. Gardens also require a dedicated and knowledgeable gardener to remain useful and beautiful over time. Our goal is to maintain an infrastructure that supports school gardeners over time while maximizing as many avenues of participation for as many participants (students teachers parents cafeteria custodial staff and community volunteers) as possible.

The garden at Mattison Avenue Elementary one garden within the Wissahickon Garden Program. The program seeks to create a holistic tangible paradigm shift in our learning community towards sustainable "green" living healthy eating and mindful consumption of our food. This vision permeates our entire community from our administration teachers students staff and our community. Through our unified action in this program we seek to educate model and live the concept of "greener learning".

The project goals are for all students through classroom and hands-on experiences to gain knowledge of relationships people have to environment plant parts and life cycles and how people help their growth other factors that enhance growth how food people eat is grown in a garden what parts of the plant are eaten and other curriculum related topics. Most of the pieces of the project are in place. The grant will allow us to maintain/update the garden and improve instructional opportunities.