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Our School Garden: Gardening With Blind Children

Updated on September 4, 2014

The Kentucky School for the Blind Garden Project

Ideas for our school garden are germinating, and along with them, this webpage!

School gardens are exciting places where children and teachers can work together to produce fruits and vegetables, and in the process learn many skills. Ecology, life cycle, genetics, soil science, seasons, weather, and nutrition are just a few of the subjects that students will learn in a garden. Science lessons spring to life when a child encounters a worm while digging in the soil.

Children learn responsibility when required to care for sprouting seeds and fledgling plants in the classroom. They learn about nutritional choices when they bite into cherry tomatoes they have grown from seeds. High school students learn vocational skills when they sell a load of produce at a farmer's market.

Gardening is a life skill students will take home to their families and their neighborhoods or communities. They will take these skills with them into adulthood.

Our school garden is an exciting place! We cannot wait to see it grow and develop, and our children along with it!

Photo credit

Our School Garden Poll I

Do you have a vegetable garden at your school?

See results

Gardening with Blind Children - Our School Garden at Kentucky School for the Blind

Our school is special, because we are home away from home for around 70 blind and visually impaired students. Our students range in age from 5 to 21 years of age, in kindergarten through high school graduation. About half of our students are reside in the dormitories on campus during the week and go home on the weekends. The other half are day students who live at home and commute daily to school.

Gardening with blind children presents some unique challenges, but they are easily overcome. Gardening can be mastered by partially sighted or totally blind people with a few adaptations.

Many gardens are started by sighted adults for the enjoyment of blind people, but we want a garden where our blind children are actors and agents, not passive recipients of experiences. Blind children often have things done for them, but our school garden is a place where blind children will make something happen.

One of our first jobs as parents and teachers is to learn how to garden with our blind children.

Starting a School Garden - Suggestions for Our School Garden

School Gardens and Resources - Ideas for Our School Garden

Resources and ideas for school gardens.

Resources for Our School Garden

As we start our school garden, a few reference materials are helpful.

How to Grow a School Garden: A Complete Guide for Parents and Teachers
How to Grow a School Garden: A Complete Guide for Parents and Teachers
In this groundbreaking resource, two school garden pioneers offer parents, teachers, and school administrators everything they need to know to build school gardens and to develop the programs that support them.
 

Instructional Activities for Our School Garden

School garden activities for use with students kindergarten through high school.

Our School Garden is Part of a Green Community - Our School Garden's Community Partners

Louisville, Kentucky is a city with a growing emphasis on sustainability. We have many green initiatives, community gardens and backyard farms.

If you have experience with a school garden, we would love to hear about that too!

working

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