The Homeschool Garden

I have always enjoyed gardening to the point of distraction. As I like to say, gardening keeps me grounded. The problem is that I could literally spend all day in the garden, which is impossible because I have many responsibilities including homeschooling. However, gardening can make for a very enriching part of daily or weekly school work. Using the garden as a teaching tool gives me some important "me" time in the garden and allows my children to learn a lot about nature, science, and the benefits of fresh air.

Nature Journal Inspiration

Our gardening as a part of school work began several years ago when I had all the children keep nature journals. I will be forever grateful to Karen Andreola. Her writings encouraged me greatly to plunge ahead with my ideas for using my garden to teach. The same year we started our nature journals, I planted quite a few perennial and annual herbs and flowers that would attract butterflies. It was a huge success. We were able to watch the entire life cycle of the blue swallowtail butterfly. I felt a wonderful sense of victory in this. The children had beautiful, creative drawings in their nature journals of a larva, a chrysalis, and, finally, a newly emerged blue swallowtail butterfly drying its freshly unfurled wings!

Creative Writing In The Garden

Last year, during one of our first gardening outings of the season, my children and I all gathered around an amazing and somewhat gruesome sight. A veritable army of ants had subdued a spider that was much larger than any of them. They were working together, dragging this spider closer and closer to the hole leading down into their underground fortress. We watched, spellbound, as the spider neared the hole, its legs collapsing in on each other as it was pulled out of sight and down into darkness. I had my creative writing assignment for the day! Each child old enough to write was to write a story based on what they had seen. They were to use 10 adjectives from a list I had given them and recount the story as vividly as they possibly could using those adjectives.

Planning Your Garden

Our garden space has evolved over time, with the front yard of our small 1/3 acre being solely for flowers and herbs, and a 20-foot x 25-foot space in the back yard being solely for fruits, herbs, and vegetables. The back yard garden is one of whimsy and creativity! We have a flower pot in one corner to hold "treasures" that we dig up. We put a small, but cute wire fence around the garden to add a boundary to help us with weeding. The entrance to the garden is an arch arbor with a grape vine making its way up higher each year. And, at intervals all along the fence are shepherd's hooks with various wind chimes and garden art hanging from them.

If you want to start your own "school garden" I would suggest tapping into the writings of any of a number of gardeners who have had experience and success teaching children with gardens. I personally am very fond of the work of Sharon Lovejoy. From one particular book, Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Gardening Together with Children>, we used her idea for planting a "garden of giants." It was a lot of fun.

In my opinion, including nature and gardening in you life brings a sense of emotional wellness. So, make sure you adequately protect yourself against the hot sun, grab your best nature identification book, get your tools and your students and start digging and learning in your own school garden!

Our Homeschool Garden

Roots, Shoots, Buckets, and Boots,
by Sharon Lovejoy.
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Pocketful of Pinecones
by Karen Andreola.
learn more

A Mother's Journal

Livin N Writin About It

Five In A Row ~ The "Heart" of our Homeschool:

Art of the Month:
"Rowing"

Quotations

"A rich child often sits in a poor mother's lap."
Danish proverb

"I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand."
Chinese proverb

More Quotations

"The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn from the crow."
William Blake

"What we learn with pleasure we never forget."
Louis Mercier

"A learned man has always wealth in himself."
Latin proverb

"My mother was the making of me. She was so true and so sure of me. I felt that I had someone to live for -- someone I must not disappoint. The memory of my mother will always be a blessing to me."
Thomas A. Edison

"You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be --
I had a Mother who read to me."
Strickland Gillilan

"The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom."
Henry Ward Beecher