Science, Socials, Health and Wellness, and Physical Education were all touched on during the year end gardening project in Ms. Dureski’s grade 6’s at Gordon Terrace.
The class has been partaking in Wildsight’s Beyond Recycling program for the past 20-odd weeks, learning about waste, water, energy, climate change, sustainability, and food. In addition to in-class lessons, hands-on activities, videos, and games, the grade 6’s have taken on some student action projects. The final project had the class working at Cranbrook’s Public Produce Garden. They started out with a tour, learning how this garden is open to the public, for anyone to contribute and for anyone to harvest. The garden’s goals include increasing food security and local food education, which are key themes in sustainable communities.
Then they got dirty! They jumped in to till, plant, mow, work the compost, thin, and even harvest some early spinach. And what great helpers they were! With most students having prior experience in tree planting or gardening, we made short work of prepping and planting some of the larger garden beds. “What a great help, I’m so impressed” said Pat, our garden guide, “I was struggling to keep up with the early heat, this is wonderful.” Moving our bodies makes for a great opportunity to work our minds too. Throughout the day, students made connections to sustainability, food production, earth sciences, physical education and even careers.
It’s amazing what 29 extra pairs of hands can get done. We can’t wait to see how it all grows!
