Our Garden Care team will utilize the UCSC Life Lab curriculum as a basis which incorporates Art, Math, and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) into their lessons by grade level. Our team will utilize Life Lab materials as a start, incorporate teacher preferences, utilize other outdoor education programs and structure two 6 week instruction periods in Fall & Spring. Lessons will occur for each grade level during their enrichment band in the master schedule.
In addition to the garden acting as a place of refuge for creatures and community visiting the Brook Knoll campus, the garden is a perfect place for hands on learning. Our friends at Life Lab say it best:
“A school garden (however large or small) provides a meaningful context in which students can apply new academic concepts and skills. Whether they are graphing the temperature of their compost pile over time; reading a recipe to make fresh salsa; writing a story from the perspective of an ant; or presenting to a buddy class on the animals that visited their sunflower patch, the opportunities for children to practice traditional academic subjects in the garden are limitless! As students use their newfound math and language skills to measure, calculate, graph, and communicate about things that really matter to them, they deepen their understanding of the subject matter while also rediscovering the joy and fascination that characterizes learning within a meaningful context.”