Gowrie @ The Harbour

I have developed the Growing Gardeners kindergarten curriculum to align with the Victorian Early Years Learning Framework 2.0. Session 1: This session focussed on being garden detectives and understanding what is already living in the garden, creating a picture of the garden ‘before’ for children to compare at the end of their Growing Gardeners program.

Session 2: Children learnt how to mix a seed raising medium and sow their own seeds. They each chose which plants they wanted to grow based on the images of the flowers, including calendula, cornflower, sweet pea, chives, coriander, parsley.

Session 3: The children’s seed sowing was a success, so this session was an extra one to show them how to pot up the seedlings so they grow until spring transplanting.

Session 4: The children have an operational worm farm they feed with their food scraps, so in this session they learnt how to create an in-garden bed worm farm using an upcycled colander. They created a sign for their peers to understand the lid needed to stay on the worm colander, as many younger children were inquisitive and wanted to see inside. Teachers were provided session plans to support extended learning, including creating a worm food menu, sorting games and worm farm care.

Session 5: To prepare for transplanting their own plants, children learnt how to weed the garden bed. They enjoyed harvesting weeds and other green waste to feed the in-bed worm farm.

Session 6: The plants the children grew were ready to go into the bed. Using plant widths, children created ‘puzzle pieces’ that were used to solve the puzzle of where to put the plants in their bed, developing their spatial reasoning and decision making skills. They were excited to transplant the plants they had grown and cared for from seed, and enjoyed digging the soil to make room for their plants.

Session 7: The children had a tray of worm castings to harvest, so they learnt how to separate the worms from the castings using two methods; creating casting pyramids and using a sieve. There was equal delight and disgust in learning the castings were worm poo, and children were highly engaged in finding worms and inspecting them with their magnifying glass. Building casting pyramids was the favourite method, and they were left to settle until the afternoon.

Session 8: Having built their casting pyramids in the morning, the children were keen to destroy their pyramids to separate out the worms. The pyramids successfully encouraged worms to dwell at the base, and children then collected the mature castings and applied them to their garden beds to feed their plants.