This curriculum builds upon many years of educating students in the garden and scales up content across grades and lessons for instructional scaffolding. It is designed as an interactive teaching tool to be co-taught with classroom teachers and garden instructors as leads. Each lesson connects directly to standards: Next Generation Science, Common Core State, Physical Education, and Environmental and Health Education. The concise and easy to-follow lessons are a packed 45 minutes for preschool through fifth grade. Flexibility is important, so some lessons include several activities that teachers can choose from to accommodate their lesson plans. Consistency is also important, so lessons follow themes and structures found in the Curriculum Map. 360 pages.

The unit is a very basic introduction to phenology geared for the littlest of learners, preschool children ages 3-5. Over the course of five weeks we embrace winter fatigue and set our sights on Spring hoping to spy our very first signs of the season—we spend time looking for the first green shoots, explore the forest floor (moss, lichen and fungi), welcome back the robins, celebrate the spring beauties, embark on a frog hunt and observe the dancing dragonflies!Week One—On the hunt for greenWeek Two—Beneath our feet…Week Three—Birds!Week Four—Spring ephemerals and awakening bugsWeek Five—Pond StudyPrior to introducing phenology to my students and implementing this unit, we had been using simple journal prompts at the end of each week as an assessment tool. My students are primarily in the pre-writing stages—the bulk of our entries are fantastic imaginative crayon sketches that we have each student describe for us. I am incredibly fortunate to teach in a garden-based program where we are outside for the majority of our learning time together and teachable moments abound. For this unit, I really wanted our Sprouts to take a closer look at the things we see every day.

Designing the school garden will require Math, ELA, and Science skills with Scientific Method being used as a foundation. Students will create a school garden as a result of the work they preloaded into the activity. Finally, students will decide if the school garden has an improvements needed for future growth or more growth.