Growing Your Food Gardening and Health Program

Here's the presentation I gave today on Garden Adventures.
Garden Adventures is a ten-week spring and fall after-school food gardening program for elementary kids.
See slides for details and online resources.

Garden Adventures Grow Your Food Gardening and Health Program USGBC 2014 from MaryVanDyke

Container Gardening at Schools: Make Your Own Mobile Planter, Buy Earthboxes and Tower Gardens - and Lesson Plans

Got some blacktop playground, 28 or so students and wondering how to garden?

Make Your Own Mobile Planter
Here's a YouTube from The People's Garden, and USDA experts at a DC school, working to make a mobile planter at a DC elementary school - from a 100 gallon plastic tank....

http://youtu.be/FoNneXBW4BI


EarthBox
Not feeling crafty - and haven't got time to make a "self-watering" planter?
Then you can buy smaller EarthBoxes for about $60 online at http://earthbox.com/

Tower Gardens
If going outside seems too difficult and you want to maximize success for indoor gardening - try a Tower Garden https://www.towergarden.com/ 
Growing veggies, herbs and flowers aeroponically without soil might just be the approach that you need to get your class going growing. The tower is easy to assemble and works with very little water/nutrients and a recirculation pump.  You can then grow vegetables indoors at a time that suits you and your class. Costs about $ 550 - 1000 for the full kit.

See how the Tower Garden works commercially at Chicago's O'Hare airport - delivering fresh local produce to airport staff and travelers.





Easy Care Native Plants for Low-Watering
The tank mobile planters, EarthBoxes and Tower Gardens work well for growing vegetables and flowers.
If you are not at school during the summer and need low-maintenance watering - try planting your Earthbox or planter with native plants such as Rudbeckia Black-eyed Susan and Echinacea Purple Coneflowers. These flowers will attract lots of pollinators and are "easy-care".

Lesson Plans
Got the box and now wondering what to teach?
Earthbox sells curricula pre-K-12 linked to standards and STEM
http://earthbox.com/edu-curricula-guides

With your Tower Garden - check out ideas for teaching from Stephen Ritz and the Green Bronx Machine http://greenbronxmachine.org/

Why is the sky blue? Why are bluebells pink? Inquiry-Based Learning Outdoors

Worried about going outside and being asked questions you don’t know the answer to?

"Why is the sky blue?" Here’s some answers to this favorite question:  http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/blue-sky/en/

If you take the challenge and go outside to teach, you will certainly find you and your students have lots of questions: “What’s this bug?”  “What’s this plant?”  Why are the bluebells pink? If you don’t know the answer, take the opportunity to learn yourself. You can say,  “That’s a good question, I’d like to find out too”  and  “Let’s google that when we get back inside”.

So, why are Virginia Bluebells sometimes pink?  Check out details at http://www.sierrapotomac.org/W_Needham/VirginiaBluebells_060402.htm

Virginia Bluebells - Mertensia virginica

Here’s to the success and diversity of student-driven and inquiry-based learning outdoors! Any questions?

Cool Tools: Smart Carts, Wheelbarrows and Learning Simple Machines in the Schoolyard

Third Grade in Virginia and elsewhere study simple machines: levers, wedges, inclined planes, screws, pulleys, the wheel and axle.

What a wonderful opportunity to study physics and engineering outdoors in the yard or schoolyard!

How does a shovel work? And a trowel?
Now experiment with several kinds of the same tool and discuss why each one works and which you find optimal.  Then design your own tools....

A wheelbarrow is an example of a machine that uses a lever and wheel/axle.
Do some testing in your yard with different wheelbarrows and garden carts.

With the Smart Cart and garden cart I can carry a load single-handed, up and down an inclined plane, with two wheels.  The Smart Cart is much easier to use than the less expensive garden cart.
With the wheelbarrow: I need two hands to carry the same load, and I need to do more work for the same load, but I only have one wheel to look after.

• Discuss with your students the pros and cons of one and two wheels.
• How well does each machine steer?
• What happens when you want to put down your barrow?
• Which machine is more stable?
• How do the wheels differ in size, and tire, and maintenance?
• Try the balance with different distributions of load?

My 7 cu ft dark green Smart Cart cost about $350
My 7 cu ft light green garden cart cost about $120
My 6 cu ft wheelbarrow cost about $85
My 4 cu ft wheelbarrow cost about $35-40
My 2 cu ft red wheelbarrow cost about $30

What is the triple bottom line for the various criteria: economic, environmental and social?
As an adult, I much prefer to use the dark green Smart Cart: I decided to base my decision not on cost alone, but how well it does the job of moving my load from point A to point B, and other criteria such as looks, mechanics and durability.

My kids K-5 give their thumbs up for the little red wheelbarrow.  And they also like the balance and ease of the big Smart Cart!

If you're looking for curriculum on simple machines and STEM in the Schoolyard - without reinventing the wheel - here it is...
http://www.realschoolgardens.org/Libraries/Documents/STEM_in_the_Schoolyard_-_Simple_Machines.sflb.ashx

Buy wheelbarrows and garden carts at your local hardware store.
Buy Smart Carts online at http://shop.mullerscarts.com/utility-cart/

Greening STEM - Environmental Education Week

This week April 13 - 19 is Environmental Education Week.
Time to think and plan!

What are you going to do to focus on "EEE" - that is Environmental Education & Engineering and Greening STEM?

http://eeweek.org/learning-center

Need more ideas? Check out my pieces on:

• QR Codes in the Garden
• How Much is that Tree?  Using the i-Tree Design Tool to Calculate the Ecological & Monetary Benefits of Trees

And the EE Engineering Educator Toolkit

Art and Science: Mural by Kyle Pierce at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum

Yesterday I was at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum for a free workshop to DNA barcode fish with 14 teens and scientist mentors.  I also visited Q?rius,  the Natural History Museum's beautiful 10,000 sq feet daylit "curiosity cabinet".  I enjoyed the new mural, and a chance to meet and talk with the artist, Kyle Pierce.

Here's more about the new mural on Kyle's blog: http://blog.kylepierceillustration.com/2013/12/12/mural-for-qrius-at-the-smithsonian/

Kyle and I talked about inspiration, science, walls, art, and mural techniques.
This mural for example is made by photographs printed on to vinyl, and works indoors.
Is there a technology to do this kind of work outdoors?
As quoted on the mural:

"The question is not what you look at, but what you see."  Henry Thoreau 

That goes for whether you are here to barcode fish, or to create buildings and art!