Indoor and Outdoor Gardens

School gardens, whether outdoor or indoor, are powerful educational tools. Students take on responsibility as caretakers, engage in agriculture, and explore human impacts on the environment, along with many ways of sustaining life. While science is the subject most often connected to gardens, they also provide rich opportunities to teach math, history, English, and the arts. Gardens offer students hands-on, real-world experiences with ecosystems, weather, insects, soil, and other environmental topics.

Resources

Sustainability Library

Elementary School Curriculum

Kindergarten

1st Grade

Sustainability connections to the Colorado Academic Standards

All organisms have external parts that they use to perform daily functions
Young organisms are very much, but not exactly, like their parents, and also resemble other organisms of the same kind
Patterns of movement of the sun, moon and stars as seen from Earth, can be observed, described and predicted

Lessons

2nd Grade

Sustainability connections to the Colorado Academic Standards

Plants depend on water and light to grow and on animals for pollination or to move their seeds around.
Wind and water can change the shape of the land; models can show the shape and these changes to the land.

Lessons

3rd Grade

Sustainability connections to the Colorado Academic Standards

Organisms have unique and diverse life cycles.
Different organisms vary in how they look and function because they have different inherited information; the environment also affects the traits that an organism develops.
Sometimes differences in characteristics between individuals of the same species provide advantages in survival and reproduction.

Lessons

4th Grade

5th Grade

Sustainability connections to the Colorado Academic Standards

Matter exists as particles that are too small to be seen; measurements of a variety of observable properties can be used to identify particular materials.
The energy released from food was once energy from the sun.
Plants acquire their material chiefly from air and water.
Matter cycles between air and soil and among plants, animals and microbes as these organisms live and die.

Lessons

Resources

Middle School Curriculum

6th Grade

Sustainability connections to the Colorado Academic Standards

Organisms and populations of organisms are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors.
Ecosystems are sustained by the continuous flow of energy, originating primarily from the sun, and the recycling of matter and nutrients within the system.
Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. Disruptions to any physical or biological component of an ecosystem

Lessons

7th Grade

Sustainability connections to the Colorado Academic Standards

All living things are made up of cells, which is the smallest unit that can be said to be alive.
Organisms reproduce, either sexually or asexually, and transfer their genetic information to their offspring.
Sustaining life requires substantial energy and matter inputs.

Lessons

8th Grade

Sustainability connections to the Colorado Academic Standards

Genetic variations among individuals in a population give some individuals an advantage in surviving and reproducing in their environment.
Human activities have altered the biosphere, sometimes damaging it, although changes to environments can have different impacts for different living things.