Garden Unit: Day 3 Benefits to Gardening

Wednesday- Benefits to Gardening

            Day 3 consists of learning the benefits of gardening in a lecture style format.  The lecture and activities took an hour longer then I had planned.  My son had a lot of information that he wanted to say, and as long as he was interested in it, I wouldn’t stop him from continuing. We first discussed the more obvious benefits to a home garden.  This is the information that he came up with:

·      Food, we can eat (most obvious)

·      Spend time outdoors

·      Learn responsibility and hard work

·      Extra food can be donated to the poor

·     
Family time

After we discussed those benefits, I wanted us to do some more research to find any other benefits to gardening.  We read a lot of great information from many different articles.   I had him create a web diagram to illustrate all the benefits that we found.  This is some of the information that we gathered from our research:

·      “Provides a number of ecosystem services such as habitats for animals and other beneficial organisms, nutrient recycling, reduced soil erosion, and enhanced pollination” (Galhena, et al., 2016, pg.8).

·      “Garden products can be sold to earn additional income” (Galhena, et al, 2016, pg. 7).

·      “include improvements in pain relief, blood pressure, heart rate, less frequent illness, improved cognitive function” (Cameron et al., 2012, pg. 134).

After the lecture lesson, I wanted my son to do a fun relaxing activity to brighten his mood from all the knowledge he just took in.  I provided him with a coloring page of some fruits and vegetables to color for fun.  My wonderful mother, Laura Bloomfield, illustrated the coloring page for his curriculum.  She is the artist in our family, and she loved creating something for our gardening project.  Thanks mom!  I have provided a link to the coloring page for your personal use as well.

Coloring Page:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By0QNYgSFLFKRWFnSFRvVTV4TjA

References:

Bloomfield, Laura (2016). Food from a Garden. Coloring page. Murrieta, CA.

Cameron, R. W. F., Blanusa, T., Taylor, J. E., Salisbury, A., Halstead, A. J., Henricot, B., Thompson, K. (2012). The domestic garden- Its contribution to urban green infrastructure.  Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 11, 129-137. doi:10.1016/j.ufug.2012.01.002

Galhena, D. H., Freed, R., & Maredia, K. M. (2013). Home gardens: a promising approach to enhance household food security and wellbeing. Agriculture & Food Security, 2:8, 1-13. doi:10.1186/2048-7010-2-8