School Garden Lessons

Community gardens as the classroom!

We partnered with Denver Urban Gardens and Denver Public Schools to support early childhood education (ECE) teachers in using the community gardens and food to teach STEM concepts to their students. From hypotheses to tasting, students can use food to discover the world around them!

Lesson guides and materials are designed for ECE classrooms, however the concepts and many of the activities can be done kids of all ages, in school or at home!

Questions about using the lessons in your classroom? Reach out to us at info@museumoffoodandculture.org

Colors & Harvesting

A scavenger hunt for ripe vegetables is an active and useful way to engage students in the school garden, learn about colors and size, and understand harvesting.

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Counting:

Garden Planning & Harvesting

These activities focus on learning numbers and practicing counting. Both in the planning and harvest, the school garden can be a great place for students to practice counting. The first activity relates to garden planning and invites students to actively participate in the decision-making process. The second activity involves harvesting and grouping the same produce items together to determine the yield.

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Descriptions & Observations

Fruits and vegetables are an easy and accessible way to practice observing the senses and practice describing experiences. This activity focuses on sensory exploration and learning description words. Students will work as a team to try and describe different fruits and vegetables using sight and touch.

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Predictions & Hypotheses

This activity focuses on sensory exploration and individual student experience. Using their eyes and ears, students will practice making predictions about the texture and taste of a vegetable from the school garden. Students will guess whether they will like or dislike a vegetable based on their predictions and then use their hands and tongues to test whether the predictions are correct.

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Vegetable Tasting

A vegetable tasting is a fun and approachable way to sample fruits and vegetables, learn more about tastes, and play with flavor. This activity focuses on individual student experience and introduces the five tastes: Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, and Umami. Students will sample different vegetables from the school garden. Then they will add different ingredients to the vegetables, compare the tastes, and determine likes and dislikes

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