Garden Classrooms

Our Garden Classroom project's first priority is the acceleration of academic achievement in science and math, facilitated through careful collaboration with teachers and our use of dynamic garden-based lessons and experiments to stimulate critical thinking. Our other goals include: Nutritional Improvement Understanding of the Natural World and Gains in Foundational Knowledge and Language Skills.

The Mackintosh Academy community's garden goal is to offer children a dynamic learning platform that encourages mastery of educational standards while inspiring students to make cross-disciplinary connections across all aspects of the International Baccalaureate curriculum. The school garden will provide an experiential learning tool to engage students intellectually socially and emotionally while supporting a variety of learning styles and abilities.

Our goals are to enhance the school curriculum and empower the community in ways that will improve their overall health. We'll integrate garden concepts into the usual curriculum to stimulate learning. Also the community has a number of threats to morbidity and mortality that may be attributed to lifestyle. The garden may reverse these threats by providing a source for fresh foods and creating a health-conscious social network. The garden will also provide a safe option for physical activity.

School gardens increase nutrition awareness environmental awareness academic achievement life skills and community building. The grant will allow us to continue to provide trained garden educator staff whose job is to develop and sustain compelling outdoor classrooms interwoven into the learning culture of each partner school and to ensure that school gardens grows in conversation with each other and that curricular resources and policy advocacy work benefit all partner schools.