Throughout its 26 – year history, the Waldorf School of Princeton has included a gardening program as part of its curriculum.  Working in the garden is part of an integrated curriculum of practical and fine arts, sciences, languages, mathematics, and athletics.  This curriculum helps students to build a coherent understanding of the world that is grounded in an understanding of the human being’s unique position in nature.  The experiences of working cooperatively in the garden to prepare a seed bed, planting, cultivating and harvesting carry over to the arts, sciences, and indeed, to all of life.

Using the school garden and greenhouse as their classroom, the students experience the disappearance of the usual physical boundaries of the school building, and immerse their hands and energy in helping to create a healthy, sustainable biodynamic garden. Beginning in Nursery and continuing into kindergarten, children are planting seeds and bulbs and caring for a garden.  The first and second grade students will plant, sow and transplant in the school’s biodynamic garden.  In third grade a formal gardening class begins. Students in third, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades each have a gardening class one day a week for an hour and a half.

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In the third grade the gardening curriculum closely supports the main lessons taught by the third-grade class teacher.  Elements of the curriculum include:  harvesting wheat that the class planted the year before and then grinding it into flour and baking bread;  measuring the garden and ploughing the earth with an antique plough;  learning how to use hand tools to turn over the soil, weed, and plant; cutting down broom corn and making brooms with the help of a professional broom – maker;  preparing seed mixes for the birds; cleaning and oiling tools;  cutting signs and stakes;  gathering maple sap for syrup;  planting garden beds using hand tools.

In fifth grade students will again work with hand tools and will learn to weed, double-dig and create raised beds.  Many projects work to support the main lesson curriculum, such as botany.    Students begin to observe a mushroom log, the growth of bulbs and ferns in the greenhouse, and are able to visually experience the difference between monocotylendon and dicotyldon.  They will create moss gardens and pinecone wreaths.  The students will begin to cook using the freshest harvest from the garden, and they will eat together at the end of class.  Each week two students are chosen to cook on a camp stove and to create a meal.

In sixth grade students will harvest cool weather crops such as herbs, corn, squash, beans and pumpkins.  They will later prepare salads and other meals from the garden’s bounty including grinding basil and garlic with a mortar and pestle for pesto.  Other activities include:  working together to lay stone pathways and borders; adopting a fruit tree (one tree per student) to tend throughout the year;  sowing warm weather crop seeds in the greenhouse and learning the art of transplanting the seedlings;  building tomato cages; and making a birdhouse.

CONTACT:  

Marla Hanan 

Community Relations Associate

Waldorf School of Princeton

609-466-1970 x121

mhanan@princetonwaldorf.org

www.princetonwaldorf.org