I was teaching a third grade class that did not enjoy math. They felt it was difficult and not as much fun as the other subjects. I decided to go out of the box to teach math, and I created a Garden Math Unit.
We planted various kinds of seeds and kept track of the growth of each plant in our lesson books. The children were most enthusiastic about the pumpkin plants. We measured the stem and the first leaves as they emerged on our pumpkin plants. We watched how the delicate vines wrapped themselves around the support of the school fence.
While we waited for the pumpkin to grow, we collected cans and we counted as we hammered nails into the bottom of the cans to make holes for an individual watering system. We each dipped our cans into the buckets of water to individually water the garden in a gentle way. The students enjoyed watching and listening to how the water fell onto the ground, nourishing the plant as if it was raining. In southern California we have been in a drought for many years and the “rain cans” make a distinct sound and pattern as water falls, that the children enjoyed seeing and hearing.
As the pumpkins appeared we started to measure their circumference with a measuring tape each week. I brought the “Sir Cumference” books to the garden and we read them together. We drew the progress of the plants in our lesson books and colored the delicate vines and leaves. As the pumpkins grew heavier we tied them to the fence with netting to add support. The students marveled at how the large pumpkins could grow from such delicate vines. We also measured our sunflower, tomatoes, lettuce, poppies, mint and bell pepper plants with yardsticks and documented their growth each week.
At some point the students thought it would be fun to have live animals in our school garden. I bought two Swedish Blue Ducks because they are hardy and not as easy for predators to see. We raised them in our classroom in an incubator until they were old enough to go outside. The students got experience measuring the amount of duck feed to give the ducks. They watched the thermometer in the incubator to make sure it was the correct temperature for their growing bodies. We put them in a basket and weighed them with a counter weight to keep track of their growth every week.
When they finally lost their downy feather and grew their adult feathers, we took them outside. They followed us across the campus to the garden, walking in a line with the students, just as if they were students too. The children squealed with delight as they watched the ducks follow us everywhere that we went!
I purchased a blue plastic swimming pool and we counted the buckets of water that it took to fill it. We placed the ducks into the pool the first time and they immediately started to splash their wings and groom and bathe themselves. The students cheered with excitement as they observed how the ducks would get into the pool each time we filled it with water.
When we harvested the pumpkins, we cut them open at the top and stuck our hands into the squishy wet pumpkin seed fiber. We drew out handful after handful of wet, gooey seeds. We counted by twos as we laid the seeds on cookie sheets to dry. At the end of the unit we ate the dried seeds with salt. Math is fun!
