Children in the Garden

K tests her strength as she attempts to pull up an old kale stump

Ever since I got back from Hawaii, I have been unable to get the idea of school gardens off my mind. Having the farm as my classroom with little K opened my eyes to just how beneficial and even essential gardening is as a teaching tool and now I am an advocate for life. There is just so much to learn from regularly spending time in a garden and the materials is so alive (literally), provoking many questions, discussions and explorations that I never want to teach without a garden again. In fact, I never want to be without a garden again, because not only did it help me teach K, I learned nearly as much as she did from our time together out among the crops.

Over our four months together, we learned more than I ever could have taught her in a classroom, especially a kid like K who is such a hands on learner, craving physical experiences. She wanted to touch, feel, taste, smell, and listen to the world around her, that's how she gathered information. Simply telling her about it would have left her completely unsatisfied, and although she loved reading stories together, she needed the physical experiences to pull all the information together. Stories made the perfect way to build on our experiences or provoke new explorations outside, but they alone only made up one piece of the puzzle.

As soon as our eggplants popped flowers, K and I went out to the garden to monitor their progress daily, watching them grow

While the gardening with older kids becomes more about the actual food and the production and process of their growth, including complex concepts such as soil composition, permaculture, etc. gardening with young children is about "being in the garden, breathing the garden, being with the garden," as Teacher Tom points out in a recent post about gardening with his preschoolers. Just being around the plants, admiring the life in a garden, the butterflies, the beetles, the bees, being present in the moment and learning to respect each and every member of the garden's mini-ecosystem (including fellow gardeners) is where the focus lies with the little ones. The garden created real life opportunities for K and I to work on things like responsibility, respect, gentle care, paying attention to and being mindful of our surroundings.

K & C selected the ripest limes on the tree for Dylan to use for salad dressing

K tested her limits with me and because I cared so much about the plants, it was easier to be firm with my boundaries which helped her grow into the wise little gardener she now is, despite being only two years old. When we first started together, she grabbed at whatever she wanted and pulled, without regard. After just a few months, she learned the names of each plant in the garden and had developed the necessary respect and restraint to check in with me before grabbing to find out if certain veggies were ripe enough for harvest. K learned not only how plants grow, but what to do with them after harvest since we often brought our bounty back to the kitchen to wash and prep for cooking. Though K and I didn't do much actual cooking together, aside from making tortilla wraps, slicing up radishes and green peppers, and frying eggs, K often watched Dylan and I, and her mother prepare our dishes for the weekly farm potluck where she got to enjoy the fruit of all of our labor in the garden, sampling and enjoying every last dish.

There is so much to learn from the garden and so much wisdom to be gained simply by spending time surrounded by the plant and wildlife there within. I really cannot say enough how much I have learned about teaching, about life, about children, and about myself from having the opportunity to use a garden as a major part of my classroom in Hawaii. It was an experience I will certainly never forget and will forever be devoted to replicating as best as I can in every school and with every child I work. Gardening, despite the amount of food I grow, will always be a part of who I am and what I do. Check out my new Pinboard, The Children's Garden dedicated to gardening with kids for tons of ideas and inspiration. Now get your kids into the garden and prepare to be astonished!

Both kids wanted to be held as we headed out to harvest the last of the lima beans but my hands were busy holding our harvest bucket and bench which I tossed to the side to snap this picture as C & K decided that holding hands together was the next best way to get the support and closeness they both were craving and it was just what they needed :)

Get Out and Play!

My mom's garden in Dorset, my playground for the summer :)

In the past two weeks I have been in Hawaii, Seattle, Boston, Connecticut, and Vermont. My baby sister graduated high school (making me feel quite old), my hang-gliding instructor brother whom I hadn't seen in two and a half years (insanely too long) visited from Santa Barbara, CA with his girlfriend, and my fiance Dylan went out of town to visit family and friends without me for the first time in years. It has been a crazy fourteen days and I've been a bit overwhelmed, which is why I've been so absent lately. I am still settling in here in Vermont, a place I haven't called home in years, so my brain is a bit jumbled, making it hard to come up with anything new. So instead, I've decided to share a gem of a video that has been on my mind lately. I can't believe I haven't shared Stuart Brown anywhere on the Sparks site yet, but now is as good a time as any right?

Sad to leave the many playgrounds of Hawaii

Dr. Stuart Brown is the founder of the National Institute for Play, a non-profit dedicated to "bringing the unrealized knowledge, practices and benefits of play into public life." His research is astounding and inspiring, putting scientific data and articulate explanations behind all my thoughts and feelings about the importance of play, not only in early childhood education, but in life as a whole for human beings of all ages. When I stumbled upon the Dr. Brown's TedTalk titled "Serious Play" (shown below) which he presented at the 2008 Art Center Design Conference, I was absolutely ecstatic. I've always know that play was important, I've heard Teacher Tom talk about it on his blog time and again, Lauren and I discussed it time and again at Bella Mente, and I've felt it in my own experience as a teacher, student, and human being, but I've never been able to back up how I felt with much more than my own opinion and anecdotal evidence.

This is fine for some people, but many are skeptical of the role of play in education, thanks to rote learning and an over emphasis of standardization and testing being the norm in traditional schooling. And before I am a teacher, I am a researcher at heart, it's where I got my start in education as a serious career and it is an important part of who I am, how I learn, and how I share my information. So needless to say, discovering Dr. Brown's work and the Institute for Play was like striking gold for me. Enough of me ranting, I'll let you check it out for yourself. Here's the talk, and definitely check out the website for the Institute linked above and learn more about the importance of play for your children, the children you work with, and everyone else in the world. Dr. Brown says, "the opposite of play is not work, it's depression," so for your own mental health, get outside and play around for a while, whatever you love doing, take some time today and go do it! I'm going to head out to work in the garden with my sister, and then maybe dance around shamelessly to some guilty pleasure music while I design and organize my new living space. It feels good to be home.