An e-twist to gardening

With the end of the school year quickly approaching, we often find our minds drifting to the outdoors. Those April showers have given us beautiful May flowers. The warm sunshine, fresh breeze and newly budded trees give us that itch to get outside—not to mention our students wanting to spend time outside, too! So why not use some time to plant a school garden? Have your class develop a flower garden outside the school building or even learn how to plant one at home. Begin with research on what types of plants to plant, where to plant them and how to care for them. Then conduct a soil test of the area to determine if you will need to add nutrients to the soil for the plants to grow. Buy some seeds and begin germinating them in the classroom window. In no time, you will have little plants to put outside.

But how do we start the seeds in the classroom? How do we know what kind of plants will grow best in our region and soil? How does this fit with the curriculum standards? Where do we find all this information? Who has time to do all this research and information locating? A lot of the Internet research and curriculum standards alignment has already been done for you through the eThemes group of the eMINTS National Center. eThemes resources provide a variety of informational Web sites for a specific topic that can be used as a “theme” or thematic unit. For example, there are eThemes resources on a variety of topics—gardening, plants and plant life cycles, Missouri plants and soil, Missouri agriculture, and the Missouri Department of Conservation. Take a look at the eThemes resources available, or do a search on a specific plant, tree, or flower your class might want to learn more about.

eThemes resources provide a list of Web sites around specific themes and correlated to the Missouri standards. These eThemes topics are combinations of several different Web sites that provide teachers useful background information, lesson plans, graphics, media, activities, quizzes, etc. With more than 1,000 eThemes topics in our database, you can search several topics that will fit your own teaching and students’ learning. Below are links to eThemes Resources that can help teachers put together units with several learning activities and information specifically related to gardening and plants.

Plants: Gardening (www.emints.org/ethemes/resources/S00000662.shtml)
These sites offer gardening tips and planting activities for kids. This resource includes hands-on experiments, lesson plans and photographs of plants and flowers. There are links to two eThemes resources on plants.

Plants: Life Cycle (www.emints.org/ethemes/resources/S00000238.shtml)
These sites focus on pollination, germination and photosynthesis in plants. There are hands-on experiments that demonstrate the characteristics of plants as well as online activities. eThemes resources on plant species, carnivorous plants and trees are included.

Missouri: Natural Resources (www.emints.org/ethemes/resources/S00001149.shtml)
Learn about the natural resources in Missouri. Topics include minerals, plants, soil, springs, rivers and animals. There are links to many separate eThemes on these topics.

Agriculture: Soil (www.emints.org/ethemes/resources/S00000112.shtml)
These sites have information about various types of soil. Learn about the components of soil such as sand, clay, silt and humus, and read how soil is formed and why it is useful to us. There are hands-on activities and science experiments. This section includes links to eThemes resources on erosion, recycling and earthworms.

Are you looking for new ideas for your classroom? Just go to Newest eThemes (www.emints.org/?ethemes/newthemes.shtml) and see what has been added each week. There is even an eThemes Calendar (www.emints.org/ethemes/calendar.shtml) that provides student-centered activities at the click of a mouse. If you scroll down the page, there are previous calendars listed with more activities. If you prefer to browse or search the eThemes database, click on the Resource Index link to browse eThemes alphabetically or by grade level. Or try a Resource Search to find all available resources matching specific search criteria (grade level and/or key words) entered by the user.

by Laura Diggs, Ph.D.
University of Missouri-Columbia College of Education