School gardens, outdoor or indoor, are powerful educational tools. Students become responsible caretakers, engage in agriculture, learn about human impacts and many more ways of sustaining life. Science is the most common subject linked to gardens but there are plenty of opportunities to teach math, history, English and the arts. Gardens are the ideal place to have real-life experiences for students while having hands-on engagement with ecosystems, weather, insects, soil and other environmental topics.
DCSD Sustainability Library k-12
Elementary
Sustainability connections to the CAS:
To live and grow, animals obtain food they need from plants or other animals, and plants need water and light.
Sustainability connections to the CAS:
All organisms have external parts that they use to perform daily functions
Young organisms are very much, but not exactly, like their parents, and also resemble other organisms of the same kind
Patterns of movement of the sun, moon and stars as seen from Earth, can be observed, described and predicted
Different organisms vary in how they look and function because they have different inherited information; the environment also affects the traits that an organism develops.
Sometimes differences in characteristics between individuals of the same species provide advantages in survival and reproduction.
Lessons:
Butterfly habitat - watch the lifecycle of a butterfly
Matter exists as particles that are too small to be seen; measurements of a variety of observable properties can be used to identify particular materials.
The energy released from food was once energy from the sun.
Plants acquire their material from growth chiefly from air and water.
Matter cycles between air and soil and among plants, animals and microbes as these organisms live and die.
Organisms and populations of organisms are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors.
Ecosystems are sustained by the continuous flow of energy, originating primarily from the sun, and the recycling of matter and nutrients within the system.
Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. Disruptions to any physical or biological component of an ecosystem
Genetic variations among individuals in a population give some individuals an advantage in surviving and reproducing in their environment.
Human activities have altered the biosphere, sometimes damaging it, although changes to environments can have different impacts for different living things.
