Sligo Creek Elementary

The goal of the school garden is that it will become the centerpiece of a new outdoor classroom, which will be located in an enclosed courtyard shared between Sligo Creek Elementary School and Silver Spring International Middle School. The space currently houses lawns and some plants but has not been consistently used as an instructional resource. The garden will afford our students the opportunity to see and personally experience plant lifecycles (and associated lifecycles of animals that depend on them) with their own senses rather than simply reading about them in books. It will also give teachers the ability to teach current curriculum with real-life examples in an outdoor setting. Students will learn in greater depth exactly where their food comes from, what natural and healthy plants and foods look like, and how to grow these foods with their own hands in soil that they themselves tend. In addition to these critical academic and health benefits, the larger goal is to instill a lifelong love of gardens and nature in the students. We hope to be able to say, as one child in a neighboring school with an instructional garden said,