Garden Club
The Garden Club at Mark Twain Middle school is part of the Seeds to Plate program and meets on Wednesday afternoons from 3:30 pm to 4:25 pm in the Mark Twain garden. The Garden Club meetings are less academically structured than a normal school day class held in the garden. The club is an excellent opportunity for students to spend time engaged in learning, discovery and fellowship while immersed in a hands-on, natural setting.
We follow a fun and interest based, constructivist, project model that includes experiencing a plant's life cycle from seed harvest, planting and maintenance to collecting, cooking and eating!
We normally sample a recipe of seasonal produce growing in the garden every week. Parents are often shocked and thrilled when their children come home raving about eating butternut squash or an Armenian cucumber salad prepared in the garden's kitchen.
There are a number of other projects throughout the year that utilizes students creative talents like painting, flower arrangements, butterfly observations and nature crafts, to name a few.
With the rigors of homework, adjusting to life as a middle school student and the fast paced, electronic device world that surrounds us, Garden Club is a safe, welcoming and calming place to spend an afternoon.
While in the garden, we always strive to follow the Seeds to Plate mission and objectives. Seeds to Plate develops students’ sense of global stewardship and healthy life choices through the following objectives:
1. Partnering with teachers to co-teach their classes our garden-based lessons that
incorporate science, history, math, English, and the arts.
2. Creating standards-based garden lessons that teachers can use for project-based
learning in the garden. Currently, we have over 100 lessons online for all teachers.
3. Providing students healthy, seasonal food from the garden to expand their palette
4. Providing students with the opportunity to explore and work in the garden during their
free time before and after school and during nutrition and lunch breaks.
Classes:
ENCOURAGING THE SPIRIT OF GIVING IN OTHERS
Seeds to Plate was founded with the spirit of giving through demonstrating human’s cooperative role in the natural ecosystem: the companion planting method we use in our organic garden is a metaphor for how the garden staff teach and how our students, teachers, and volunteers engage in the garden. Students, teachers, volunteers learn to work in teams, cooperate to build the larger whole, and share with fellow students.