High School | LGT 2021 Staging Site

check out the Little Green Thumbs infographic poster for inspiration about how you can improve the social and emotional wellbeing of your students with a classroom garden.

Calming Environment. Environments with living plants help to regulate emotions, improve focus, concentration and have been shown to reduce stress.
Healthy Eating. Children who grow their own food are more likely to eat fruits and vegetables.
Teamwork. Gardens encourage positive human relationship, social skills and belonging.
Empathy. Gardens teach nurturance, patience and respect for living things.
Inclusivity. A garden is the perfect learning tool for students not succeeding in a traditional learning environments.
Self Esteem. A garden creates a safe place for risk and can normalize small setbacks, leading to greater resiliency and self esteem.

Gardens are great places for inquiry. Check out this infographic poster for evidence based ways that gardens transform wonder into knowledge through inquiry.

Some content includes:

Questions naturally sprout

Students have natural curiosity about nature and may already have questions about how plants grow, what the parts do and where plants come from. Working hands-on in the garden has a way of inspiring more questions!

A safe place for risk

Using plants for investigation creates safety for failure or setbacks. We can grow more plants or sprout more seeds. We can take risks and experiment using questions as our guide!

Plants change over time

Plants are ideal subjects for experimentation. Students can witness an entire lifecycle in a season. They can isolate simple plant growth variables, such as light, moisture or nutrients and see results quickly.

Student’s natural curiosity

A student’s natural fascination with the natural world can lead to greater engagement with learning, making it easier to scaffold students into active, independent learners.

School Gardens Plant the Seed of Healthy Eating. Check out some evidence-based ways that gardens lead to improved nutrition and healthy eating!

Some content includes:

Increase Fruit & Vegetable Consumption

Children who grow their own food are more likely to eat fresh fruits and vegetables (Canaris, 1995; Hermann et al., 2006; Libman, 2007; McAleese & Rankin, 2007; Pothukuchi, 2004)

Preference for Fruits & Vegetables

Children exposed to growing fruits and vegetables have an enhanced preference for these foods. (Lineberger & Zajicek, 2000).

Improved Nutrition Knowledge

A garden-based nutrition education improves students’ nutrition knowledge and preferences for vegetables. (Morris & Zidenberg-Cherr, 2002)

Improved Attitudes Towards Fruits and Vegetables

Exposure to a school garden improves attitudes towards fruits and vegetables. (Pothukuchi, K. 2004)

A one page infographic poster from Little Green Thumbs with evidence-based ideas for how your garden can be used to build environmental stewardship.

Ideas include:

Get Close to Nature in a School or Classroom Garden. Connection with nature is key for child development (Thorp & Townsend, 2001), and hands-on experiences are the best way for students to develop an understanding of their complex world.
Cultivate Wonder and Positive Relationship with the Environment. Students gain more positive attitudes about the environmental after participating in a school garden program. (Waliczek & Zajicek, 1999)
Observe and Understand How the World is Connected. Children gain their most powerful understandings of their natural environment through direct exploration of nature. (Lekies & Beery, 2013; Thomas & Thompson, 2004)
Build Knowledge about the Natural World. School gardens as a knowledge building tool for core subject materials (Williamson & Smoak, 1999) as well as agriculture, ecology and sustainability.
and more!

Little Green Thumbs gardens help students create meaningful, informed connections between the food they grow and eat, and the agricultural processes involved in producing it.

Download this infographic created by Little Green Thumbs to provide inspiration for connecting your garden to the bigger world of agriculture!

Language

Grades

Subject

Themes

Types

Bulb Botany

Making Seed Bombs

The People – Plant Connection

Tasting Etiquette Activity

Tasting Activities from Big Green

Plant Needs (Gr.3-5 Lesson)