Great School Garden Article and Resource List

Civil Eats, an organization that "promotes critical thought about sustainable agriculture and food systems as part of building economically and socially just communities," wrote a fantastic blog post about school gardens.


The blog post features stories of various school gardens throughout the country and an impressive list of additional resources. The resources include nonprofit organizations working to start school gardens, organizations creating curriculum and lesson plans for gardens, and funding opportunities.

The blog post shows the variety of ways to incorporate a garden into the classroom and the array of ways to approach it. Best of all, the blog post is inspirational and shows that it is possible to have a successful school garden.

Click here to check it out!

Resource: Children's Books about Food

The blog Obama Foodorama follows current efforts in food and agriculture policy in Washington.

A recent post, of interest to teachers, is entitled "'Where the Wild Things Are' Joins Another Foodcentric Children's Book on the Official Obama Reading List"

In the post, the blogger highlights children's books that reference food. It includes descriptions of

• Duck for President
• The Curious Garden
• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
• Six-Dinner Sid
• Stone Soup
• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
• The Lorax
• The Giving Tree
• I'm Gonna Like Me

Each of these stories offers important lessons about food, farming, gardening, etc. and would be a great resource or story to read to your class.

Spooner School District Garden

In an effort to try to find all of the Got Dirt? Gardens in Wisconsin, I have exchanged emails with Diann Parker of Spooner Elementary.

Spooner School District has been gardening for three years now. Diann directed me to her blog www.helpinghandsgarden.blogspot.com, which is a history of their garden.

Check it out!

It shows an actual school garden in action. The blog highlights the steps taken to start the garden and how the school district uses the produce from the garden. There are plenty of pictures showing the garden's progress.

It's inspirational to see a school garden in action and learn how one school district is incorporating it into the curriculum and meals for the students.