We are two educators with roots in numerous schools of the Delaware Valley. We were greatly inspired by our attendance at the 2009 Gardens and Children conference sponsored by the American Horticultural Society. We benefitted greatly from all the folks we met at the conference and were inspired to try new things with children and gardens the following school year.
Because the next year's event was too far away for us to attend, we decided to create a mini gathering for educators and volunteers who garden with students here in our area. We invited many folks in the greater Philadelphia area with interests and knowledge about many aspects of this same topic. Our participants included public and private school classroom teachers, Penn State Ag Extension Master Gardeners, youth interns from local high schools, an urban farmer, a Bartram's Garden museum educator, and Pennsylvania Horticultural Society educators.
This year will be our second gathering. Again, we want to provide a forum for sharing and learning together. We will meet the first week in August. We hope you will join us in exploring and learning about some of the wonderful resources of our own area, as well as sharing expertise and offering mutual support.
We are eager to meet you and learn from you while sharing things that we have learned and tried ourselves. Come join us to see some wonderful places where gardens, plants, and children connect. Each day will begin in a different location. In addition, participants will be encouraged to recommend nearby sites that we might also visit on a given day. Each day we will tour a specific site to gain ideas and learn how gardens are used with students. We will use the location as a springboard for our own conversations, sharings and curricular planning as the participants see fit.
We want this blog to be a conversation for all adults interested in gardening with children. We welcome your experiences, photos, questions, and advice. Please share this blog with anyone you know who also might be interested.
Fern here: There are so many things happening with gardens all around us. Children may garden in a community garden, a school based program, with a Sunday school program, at a rec center, or a retirement community.
ReplyDeleteThe school year calendar can make gardening a challenge as the garden is just getting going when school lets out for the summer. The traditional school year was originally based on freeing up children to help their families with farm duties during the height of the growing season. (Frequently, even that vacation timing was not enough...my grandmother taught in a one room school house with students who were taller and older than her as they had missed school days each year to accomodate working on their family's farm.)
These days we can garden indoors with students, or create protective structures to expand the growing season into late fall and earlier into the spring. Let us know what you are doing and what you see as important issues that we might explore together.