Educator Seminar: "Gardening With Children: Making Learning Visible"

Hosted by Bing Educators Nancy Verdtzabella, Andrea Alexander, Lara Cardamone, Marisa Chin-Calubaquib, Anna Christiansen, and Chuyi Yang

Children are naturally drawn to outdoor spaces and are keen observers of the world around them. This session will highlight the opportunities that gardening provides for building observational skills and awareness of natural processes. Gardening is rife with possibilities for building children’s cognitive, physical, and emotional selves, as they ask questions, theorize, notice, dig, and wait, while experiencing anticipation, accomplishment (and perhaps disappointment), and wonder. Children’s early experiences in the natural world with adults who are important to them forms an environmental foundation. As Louise Chalwa (2006) highlights, “childhood experiences in nature through their own free play and in the company of significant adults, ...carry the memory that the natural world is a place of such full and positive meaning that it justifies their most persistent efforts to protect it.