Get Growing!
Incorporate, Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts and Community Involvement into your High Tunnel Project!
Growing a meal in the High Tunnel greenhouse can be a unique way to to reinforce lessons across multiple content areas and provide students with an experiential, hands-on project opportunity that they will enjoy! In 6-7 lessons, you will be able to touch on salient concepts in Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts. Your project will also provide students with a unique connection to the greater community food system. Below you will find some ideas to inspire your curriculum and lesson planning.
Identify a crop to grow:
Pick a crop that you and your students are excited to try and grow.
For ideas on what to grow for a meal, visit the FEAST by the Bay Cookbook
Some possible ideas include:
- Ingredients for a stir-fry: Asian greens, snap peas and baby carrots
Refer to the Superior Stir Fry for recipe
- Ingredients for a hearty winter meal: Turnips, kale, chives & greens
Refer to High Tunnel Turnip Soup and Sea Cave Caeser Salad for recipes
- Try growing a variety of interesting salad greens to add a delicious component to a Spring class picnic!
Let the Math Begin:
- How much can you grow?
- How much do you need?
- Convert agriculutural quantities, (plants, bushels, pounds) into cups and tablespoons! i.e. How many plants will it take to
make 42 cups of spinach for Chequamegon Saag?
- Use fractions and conversions to double, triple or quadruple a recipe to feed your guests.
- Use consumer math the calculate the cost of additional ingredients.
- Practice estimating with weights and measures!
Give your students a chance to apply math concepts to real-world questions!
Science is EVERYWHERE:
Connect your project to your current science lessons!
-Create an experiment of growing different crops or different varieties of the same crop.
-Have students graph and chart High Tunnel temperatures on a x and y axis.
-Connect your units on:
- Weather
- Seasons
- Life-cycle of plants
- Latitude and longitude
- Day length
- The Nitrogen Cycle
- Building and design
- Global warming and Climate Change
- Heat transfer and loss
- Nutrition and the Body (see the Year-Round Spinach Project for a more in-depth outline and possible science concepts)
The High Tunnel offers real-world examples and so many concepts in Earth Science, Physical Science and Life Science. It can be as simple as taking your students to the High Tunnel on a sunny windless day and letting them feel the difference in temperature from inside and out. Bring the concepts of convection, conduction, radiation and the "green house effect" to life!
Apply Social Studies concepts:
Since the dawn of time, food has been an essential piece of human culture.
- Explore the world through the lens of food. Whether you are studying France in the 1800's or discovering the fertile crescent, add a hands-on component to your discussion about cultures from other places and times through agriculture and food.
- Talk about the food system directly;
- Connect current geo-political and economic events to our global and local food system.
Read All about it!
Let your students experience the High Tunnel through literature.
-Try reading a non-fiction article related to growing turnips
-Write poems inside the high-tunnel describing spinach growing on a cold-February day
-Read a work of futuristic dystopian-fiction while you grow salad greens in the protected climate of the High Tunnel.
-Check out the Persephone Day Research Project to connect the High Tunnel to your unit on Mythology and Creative Writing.
Connect with Art
- Work with your Art Specialist to have students create a brochure or poster advertising your produce or event
- Throw pottery bowls for for your meal of soup.
- Have students draw inside the High Tunnel on a sunny winter day.
Determine a space where your students can be a part of the processing and cooking!
Partner with your Districts' FACS department to use kid-friendly kitchens and food prep spaces, or use one of the many commercial grade community kitchens in our area for an exciting food prepping field trip!
Identify a community connection for your food:
- Provide a side dish or salad for a Community Meal (Senior Fridays, Elderly Center, Hearts to End Hunger)
- Provide a raw materials for a special School Meal to be prepared by your food service staff
- Participate in a Fundraising or Community Event where your entree or side can be served, (for example, a mixed green salad
for a Basketball Team spaghetti feed)
- Sell high quality salad greens to a local restaurant!
The possibilities are endless!
Regardless of what crop you grow or how you plan to use it, plan on the following sessions!
Session 1: Introduce students to the project and the High Tunnel, plan your project
Session 2: Plant seeds
Session 3: Observe plants in the High Tunnel environment, plan for Harvest
Session 4: Harvest plants, initial processing
Session 5: Final processing (cooking project, sampling, packaging, delivering, etc)
Session 6: Assess, evaluate and debrief
Pick a crop that you and your students are excited to try and grow.
For ideas on what to grow for a meal, visit the FEAST by the Bay Cookbook
Some possible ideas include:
- Ingredients for a stir-fry: Asian greens, snap peas and baby carrots
Refer to the Superior Stir Fry for recipe
- Ingredients for a hearty winter meal: Turnips, kale, chives & greens
Refer to High Tunnel Turnip Soup and Sea Cave Caeser Salad for recipes
- Try growing a variety of interesting salad greens to add a delicious component to a Spring class picnic!
Let the Math Begin:
- How much can you grow?
- How much do you need?
- Convert agriculutural quantities, (plants, bushels, pounds) into cups and tablespoons! i.e. How many plants will it take to
make 42 cups of spinach for Chequamegon Saag?
- Use fractions and conversions to double, triple or quadruple a recipe to feed your guests.
- Use consumer math the calculate the cost of additional ingredients.
- Practice estimating with weights and measures!
Give your students a chance to apply math concepts to real-world questions!
Science is EVERYWHERE:
Connect your project to your current science lessons!
-Create an experiment of growing different crops or different varieties of the same crop.
-Have students graph and chart High Tunnel temperatures on a x and y axis.
-Connect your units on:
- Weather
- Seasons
- Life-cycle of plants
- Latitude and longitude
- Day length
- The Nitrogen Cycle
- Building and design
- Global warming and Climate Change
- Heat transfer and loss
- Nutrition and the Body (see the Year-Round Spinach Project for a more in-depth outline and possible science concepts)
The High Tunnel offers real-world examples and so many concepts in Earth Science, Physical Science and Life Science. It can be as simple as taking your students to the High Tunnel on a sunny windless day and letting them feel the difference in temperature from inside and out. Bring the concepts of convection, conduction, radiation and the "green house effect" to life!
Apply Social Studies concepts:
Since the dawn of time, food has been an essential piece of human culture.
- Explore the world through the lens of food. Whether you are studying France in the 1800's or discovering the fertile crescent, add a hands-on component to your discussion about cultures from other places and times through agriculture and food.
- Talk about the food system directly;
- Connect current geo-political and economic events to our global and local food system.
Read All about it!
Let your students experience the High Tunnel through literature.
-Try reading a non-fiction article related to growing turnips
-Write poems inside the high-tunnel describing spinach growing on a cold-February day
-Read a work of futuristic dystopian-fiction while you grow salad greens in the protected climate of the High Tunnel.
-Check out the Persephone Day Research Project to connect the High Tunnel to your unit on Mythology and Creative Writing.
Connect with Art
- Work with your Art Specialist to have students create a brochure or poster advertising your produce or event
- Throw pottery bowls for for your meal of soup.
- Have students draw inside the High Tunnel on a sunny winter day.
Determine a space where your students can be a part of the processing and cooking!
Partner with your Districts' FACS department to use kid-friendly kitchens and food prep spaces, or use one of the many commercial grade community kitchens in our area for an exciting food prepping field trip!
Identify a community connection for your food:
- Provide a side dish or salad for a Community Meal (Senior Fridays, Elderly Center, Hearts to End Hunger)
- Provide a raw materials for a special School Meal to be prepared by your food service staff
- Participate in a Fundraising or Community Event where your entree or side can be served, (for example, a mixed green salad
for a Basketball Team spaghetti feed)
- Sell high quality salad greens to a local restaurant!
The possibilities are endless!
Regardless of what crop you grow or how you plan to use it, plan on the following sessions!
Session 1: Introduce students to the project and the High Tunnel, plan your project
Session 2: Plant seeds
Session 3: Observe plants in the High Tunnel environment, plan for Harvest
Session 4: Harvest plants, initial processing
Session 5: Final processing (cooking project, sampling, packaging, delivering, etc)
Session 6: Assess, evaluate and debrief
