Our days have been filled with gardening, harvesting and cooking. Juicy, ripe and the most delicious tomatoes were firstly picked then washed, cut, and finally transformed by the children into tomato sauce which will be served on Thursday with wholemeal pasta. Flowers are blossoming beautifully as they are cared for by a very eager watering team! Every day we feed our friendly chickens, who get the best of our food scraps and return the favour to us with fresh eggs.
We all have an inborn connection with nature. This bond is especially apparent in young children who are wide open to the world they encounter and who take a deep interest and delight in the outdoors. Our role as teachers is to guard that space and foster the child’s sense of reverence and connectedness to the natural world. In Steiner Early Childhood Education, it is widely recognised that growing food and connecting with the earth are deeply important to the healthy development of a child. When we involve the children in gardening, we give them the opportunity to perceive and reconnect to the world of nature, to recognise the rhythms of the seasons, and to experience their role in caring for the earth. Working in a garden often leads to a discussion around the importance of how we nourish our bodies and how we treat the world around us (the people, bugs, plants, air, water, and soil). This awakening to nature, along with the physical work that gardening brings, strengthens the children’s life forces and develops a social dynamic required for everyone to be able to work together in a shared garden plot. The children learn to find their place in a community project that requires them to develop and use skills such as cooperation, listening, empathy, sharing and navigating conflict, all while creating something beautiful from nature.
In addition to connecting the children to the natural world and their place in it, the garden gives children a much-needed education in how to make healthy food choices. In the garden, the children learn to use their natural senses as tools to identify what are healthy, natural food sources. We use our eyes to identify the colours that naturally occur in the foods we are growing. We use our sense of taste to discover the flavours of fresh vegetables and fruits. We use our sense of smell to explore ideas such as, how does the smell of lemon balm or mint make me feel? In the garden, children are empowered to use their senses to make healthy food choices and nourish their bodies.
