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Grade 1 and 2 students at Diefenbaker elementary designed and painted signs for the school’s garden last year.
Photo by Hannah Scott
Kids dig designing own garden plots
By Hannah Scott, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
Published 10:33 PDT, Tue August 3, 2021
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Students at Diefenbaker elementary enjoyed the fruits of their labour thanks to signs they created for their school’s garden.
“As a school community, we work together to grow our garden,” says teacher Abigail Aguilar, whose Grade 1 and 2 class designed the signs. “Students work on planting, prepping, weeding and watering the garden beds. My class (last) year planted potatoes, (and) we also partnered with our cohort class to grow carrots.”
The signs came about because of two special designated garden beds for student-led activity and play, called the “explore bed” and “story bed.” Students are encouraged to use these areas to look for bugs, use toy dinosaurs to create stories, and explore with magnifying glasses and garden tools.
“Students love to explore and play in these garden beds, (and) it leads to many meaningful curricular connections. However, some students did not know which garden beds they could play in,” says Aguilar. “As a garden committee, we noticed the need for signage to keep encouraging students playing and exploring in those designated areas. We felt student-created signs would be a great way for our community to come together and to share what we have been growing and what we do with our garden beds.”
Aguilar’s class brainstormed and came up with sign names, then worked on the designs in small groups. They made practice versions on paper, then copied them onto large wooden signs which were painted and placed in the garden. The hands-on project was engaging and helped students feel connected to the school community and learn to work together.
“(Students) take pride in contributing to their school garden and love to watch what they planted grow,” says Aguilar. “It has been great to see our potatoes flourish thus far. My class has been excited to contribute to the garden with the addition of the garden signs.”
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