Garden Lessons: Welcome to the Garden! (Grades Pre-K & K)

Grades: Pre-K & K

Lesson Objective(s): Get students used to the garden as a space for learning and help them understand the boundaries and rules we have in the garden.

Supplies Needed

• Garden Rule Cards (with pictures & description beneath):

  • Harmonica music card: “When we hear the harmonica, we put our hands together, put our eyes on the teacher, and say “Hands like glue, eyes on you”

  • Ear card: “We listen to our garden teacher”

  • Check boxes card: “We follow directions in the garden”

  • Garden Shovel card: “We use tools for gardening- not as toys”

  • Raise hand card: “When we ask or answer questions, we raise our hands”

  • Grapes & flowers card: “We always before we pick something in the garden”

  • Bees & worms & flowers & people card: “ We respect the plants, animals, and people in our garden”

• 1 Poster board with drawing of a garden (labelled), a big bubble around the garden, and the “outside garden” labeled outside of the bubble

• post-it notes & 1 Sharpie/Marker

• Harmonica

• Watering cans set up

Introduction (5 mins):

• Meet little ones across street with rope w knots tied in it- every child “adopts a knot.” Cross the street and challenge them to sit on their bottoms.

• Welcome everyone to garden: introduce self, ask who’s been to the garden before

• go around circle: say names

• Do repeat-after-me welcome song:
  

  • Hello garden, hello garden

    Time to grow

    We’ll have so much fun there

    So let’s go!

• I bet you have rules in your classroom, don’t you? What kind of rules do you have?

  • Take a few hands

• Just like how you have rules in your classroom, we have rules in our garden to keep us safe & help our garden grow!

Activity (20 mins)

• Explain instructions: Today we’re going to play a game where we get to play pretend. Who likes to play pretend?

• We’ll use these cards (show cards). Each card has a rule that we follow in the garden.

• Do an examples fairly quickly with whole class:

  • Harmonica card

    • This harmonica isn’t for making music. Sometimes, it’s hard to use my voice to get everyone’s attention all at once

    • Practice: When hear harmonica, class says “Hands like glue, eyes on you!”. Clasps hands together, put eyes on speaker

    • Practice the right way, and the wrong way

  • Ear card: “We listen to our garden teacher”

    • practice listening & not listening

    • how did you show me that you were listening? How did I know you weren’t listening?

  • Check boxes card: “We follow directions in the garden”

    • practice following silly directions and not

  • Garden Shovel card: “We use tools for gardening- not as toys”

    • everyone get their pretend shovels out!

  • Raise hand card: “When we ask or answer questions, we raise our hands”

  • Grapes & flowers card: “We always before we pick something in the garden”

    • again- do it pretend

  • Bees & worms & flowers & people card: “ We respect the plants, animals, and people in our garden”

• After each item, blow harmonica & ask class: does that belong in garden class, or outside garden class. point to poster board while going through items

  • ex. during our silly pretend time, the class showed me they weren’t listening by talking while I was talking. Does that belong in our garden, or outside our garden?

Transition: Now that we’ve seen such good examples of how we act in the garden, let’s see if we can do it for real!

Garden Activity

• Show example first

• Have kids water garden- everyone pairs up with a buddy, practice sharing.

• show exactly where to water

Wrap up:

• Gather in group

• Ask for examples of how they followed the rules while gardening

• Sing the group out:

  • Goodbye garden, goodbye garden

    Time to go

    We had so much fun here

    Watch us grow

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