Garden Lessons: Welcome to the Garden! (Grades 4-6)

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

Welcome everyone to garden: introduce self, ask who’s been to the garden before
go around circle: say names
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

Explain instructions: Today we’re going to play a game where we make skits. Who thinks they know what a skit is? What kind of skits have you done before?
We’ll use these cards (show cards). Each card has a rule that we follow in the garden. In a moment, we’re going to get into groups, and you and your group will make a short skit about how you would follow this rule correctly, and another short skit about a silly way you wouldn’t follow this rule
Do an example with whole class:
- Take harmonica card & read it. Ask: who knows what this is (take a hand or two)
  - 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 puts hands together and eyes on speaker
  - Practice the right way, and the wrong way
Group Up & Make skits: Pass out cards, one per student. students find those with matching cards
Have 2-5 minutes to come up with: one short skit on how to NOT follow the rule, and one on how TO follow the rule. The sillier, the better!
After each group is done, the group shows their 2 skits to the rest of the class
(If time) As go through groups, ask rest of class: does that belong in garden class, or outside garden class. Write or draw on post-it note, put on big poster board.

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: Transplanting in the garden