Introduction to Garden Elective

            As an elective, we choose to make a home garden.  I originally created these activities for a college class project, the project was a guide for homeschooling families in creating a home garden and learning about gardening.   I wanted to share with you, just in case, someone is interested in
creating a unit for this topic.  It definitely was one of my favorite units in homeschooling so far and I think my son would agree.  I have provided links to each of the activity pages.

 
Introduction:        
           If you are reading this guide, then you are probably either a homeschooling family or future gardener.  For those interested in gardening, this will only be a basic guide to understand the steps to creating a home garden.  This guide is more steered towards the education of gardening for elementary school children.  However, I hope you find some of the information beneficial to your
gardening adventure.

 If you are a fellow homeschooling family, welcome!  Homeschooling can be an extremely difficult task to do.  It requires an extreme amount of patience, understanding, and love mixed all in one.  When I first started homeschooling my son, I was a little unsure about the situation.  In fact, I
almost did not make the decision because of the negative opinions that some friends and family put upon me.   We decided to try homeschooling anyway and fell in love with being able to teach our own child.

As a homeschool parent, I researched and studied what my son needed to learn for his grade level.  I looked for extra activities as “elective” studies that he was interested in participating in.  One of his choices was gardening.  He wanted to learn how to grow vegetables and fruits.  I knew nothing about gardening when I first started this curriculum project.  In fact, my family knows me of having a “black” thumb.  I could never keep a plant alive for more than a week.  Since my research I have turned my black thumb into a greenish-brown thumb (I mean, lets be honest, I still have a lot to learn about this garden experience).  However, I am so eager to share with you our experiences as well as my curriculum plan for my son’s education.  I wanted to create this guide for other homeschool families to use and to encourage them to create a home garden for your family.  Gardening has so many great benefits and I am excited for you to see all the fun activities your children can do, while learning something great.

As with any homeschool guide, I created it based on our homeschooling schedule and learning.  This guide is a 10-step education guideline; however gardening is a much longer process.  We do our elective lessons every Monday- Friday for about an hour, but don’t feel obligated to do every worksheet that I provide if it is too challenging or not enough of a challenge for your children.  Also, please feel free to share this guide with other homeschool families who may want to add this subject to their homeschooling curriculum.  

Here are the links to the other pages in the project: