Educating our selves and our children is a great way to start changing the bad habits we have developed in our society. As I have written before about how to start an environmental education program, I will now be implementing one as well at Q151 in Queens.
I am starting to implement the program in phases. The first phase will start this year and then begin to take form in the Sept when school starts again. The first phase is to create two gardens for the school. A 9/11 memorial butterfly garden and a vegetable garden.
- The first will be a butterfly garden, where the children can:
* Raise seeds of milkweed plants and study the process
* Plant the milkweed plants and create a new eco system for the butterflies and other living organisms - study the process and understand the importance of the eco system and how we are connected to it.
* Raise the Monarch butterfly from a caterpillar and release them in the garden. Teaching the kids about their migration and again the importance of protecting their homes and how we are all connected.
- The second will be a vegetable garden, where the children can:
*grow vegetables from seeds in the classroom
*Plant and grow a vegetable garden outside the classroom, study the process
*Learn about healthy foods and local fresh foods
*Have a green market with the harvested vegetables to introduce that to the community
*Try to bring in issues like water conservation, composting, etc.
I have also started in this phase to bring in educational workshops, one example is Recycling - this workshop will be the first on May 14th.
I will post more on the progress of this endeavor in future posts.
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