March has arrived, and with it a brand-new project at Rise Above: I Am a Gardener.
When most of us think of a garden, we think of fruits and vegetables. But our children are learning that a garden is so much more than that. They are exploring what a gardener actually does, what you find when you look closely at a garden, and the living systems that make growth possible.
Our teachers are opening up conversations around questions like: What is a gardener? What do they need to do their job? What else lives in a garden besides the plants? The children are discovering that a garden is a whole world, from the bees that help flowers grow, to the role of sunlight and water, to the rich soil that holds everything together.
This project is child-led, as all of our projects are. Our teachers follow the children’s interests and let their questions guide where the learning goes. If the children become fascinated with what bees do, we go deeper into bees. If they want to understand how seeds become plants, we plant them and find out.
Some of our classrooms will be planting right in the classroom this month, giving children the chance to care for something living over time and watch it respond to what they do.
This is the heart of what we do at Rise Above. We give children real questions, real materials, and real time to explore. A garden is a perfect place to do that.
