St. Paul’s Children’s Garden
Lesson Plan from Mrs. Wimer
~ Bio for Mrs. Nancy Wimer ~
Our “Garden Director”, Nancy Wimer, prefers her nickname, “the garden lady”. With a degree in Elementary Education and more than 30 years experience as a certificated pre-school director and teacher, the garden lady stepped out of the classroom and into the dirt five years ago. The good soil of the St. Paul’s garden allows Nancy to combine her lifelong enthusiasm for teaching pre-schoolers with her passion for sharing the gardening experience. The mission of the St. Paul’s children’s garden is to have a play area and working laboratory that encourages children to sow and harvest a variety of plants; to learn about the care and maintenance of a garden as well as the preservation of nature and ecosystem. In doing so, children are introduced to life long values such as hard work, perseverance, patience, respect, stewardship and their rewards. The garden lady’s charge is to act as the specialist resource teacher to help the children gain the hands on experience of gardening, watching the fruits of the efforts grow and mature and provide the all to rare experience of “getting your hands dirty” in a positive environment.
January Lessons from the Garden
Leaves, leaves everywhere! The recent storms have really shown us what winter weather can do to a garden. The giant mulberry tree has starting shedding its leaves. Our Tues/ Thurs. children had a wonderful time raking and cleaning. Teamwork was the answer and everyone did their part.
Along the way we measured the leaves seeing which was the longest – the shortest etc. We estimated and then used a ruler for accurate results. This was a new concept to many of the children. They also measured the size of the trunk of this tree by counting how many children it took to go round the trunk.
As we walked through our garden area we observed:
§ Areas of erosion in the Prayer Garden path
§ Soft, green moss growing on the north side of the pathway
§ Other trees that were not losing their leaves at all (Lowquat, Orange and Grapefruit).
§ We compared the different sized shapes of all of our trees throughout the gardens
§ We found the vegetables that did not like to grow in cold weather (zucchini, green beans and tomatoes).
§ We also wondered why the lettuce, swiss chard, carrots and cabbage are still healthy and thriving.
Peter Rabbit would be happy in our garden… Almost all of our children have had the experience of reading a wonderful book entitled, “The Leaf Man” by Lois Ehlert and creating their own leaf people as a follow up activity. This is a great book to read with your children.
We will have more leaves to rake again and more to explore in our garden next month.
