Meaningful Context Assists

I am writing a series of posts about eight principles of education integrated into the design and activities of Hershey Children’s Garden and how you can use these principles with your little green thumbs.

Principle number Six: Stories and Themes. Did you ever sit in math class (no offense to math teachers) and ask yourself, "Why on earth am I learning this formula?" I personally find it difficult to learn something without a relevant context for its use. What is the point of learning photosynthesis unless I know that gardening is ALL about manipulating this biological process?

One thing we try to accomplish here at Cleveland Botanical Garden is to incorporate the use of story whenever possible. Staff build programs and activities around stories. The use of story as a vehicle for learning provides relevant frameworks for WHY it is worth knowing something.

The Garden’s Eleanor Squire Library has an excellent selection of children’s books geared toward the natural sciences. So, spice up the time you have with your kids through a good story or two and then let them loose outside and see how they play and discover for themselves.

Posted by Josh Steffen 

Social Interaction is Effective

I am writing a series of posts about eight principles of education integrated into the design and activities of Hershey Children’s Garden and how you can use these principles with your little green thumbs.

Principle number five: Let kids play and help each other.  We humans are social beings and most of what we learn concerning the world around us comes through our interaction with others. Kids not only learn through play, but they learn through playing together! Most visitors who come to Hershey Children’s Garden are part of a group, and the Garden is designed to accommodate their social interaction.

The placement of open spaces and the placement of seating and surfaces for activities in central locations are key for a kid-friendly landscape.  But most of all, just let them play together, and the learning often takes care of itself.

 Posted by Josh Steffen

 Avoid Extrinsic Rewards
 

I am writing a series of posts about eight principles of education integrated into the design and activities of Hershey Children’s Garden and how you can use these principles with your little green thumbs.

Principle number four: let them discover. A number of child development and workplace researchers have suggested that rewards that come to us externally (a bonus, three stars on the board, "great job, dude") do not always motivate us to learn. Actually, children in one experiment exhibited worse performances when offered an external reward than when offered only the reward of completing a challenging problem. 

As we saw from my last post, kids naturally absorb information through the things that interest them. This is naturally tied to giving your kids some limited free choice as well.

Children who explore Hershey Children’s Garden discover many things for themselves. They learn how raspberries grow and when to pick them by seeing them growing and picking them when they are ripe. They discover what the layers of the earth’s crust are by opening doors, as in the picture above, to discover strange words like leaf litter, clay and bedrock. Nothing replaces the sheer fun of learning what floats and what does not by dropping stuff into the pond (highly discouraged by staff, of course).

So hold back on dangling the carrot and aid your children in seeing how fascinating the world is when we discover it for ourselves.

Posted by Josh Steffen

Interest Enhances Learning - Light the Fire

I am writing a series of posts about the eight principles of education integrated into the design and activities of Hershey Children’s Garden and how you can use these principles with your kids.

Principle Three: lighting the fire. A parent once gave me a great definition for "education." "Education," he said "is not about conveying facts, but about lighting a fire." People, in general, absorb knowledge and gain skills in the things that interest them. This may seem like common sense, but I have found that common sense is not so common. In the Hershey Children’s Garden, we attempt to engage children’s interests in two main ways. First, we provide intriguing spaces in which a child feels comfortable.

Bright colors are groovy, but more important is scale and detail. Adults walk into the Garden and are swept away in gorgeous vistas of tree houses, wildflowers and all the beauty that surrounds them. Meanwhile, their four-year-old is following the ant crawling across the ground or is captivated by the fish and frogs in the pond. The scale of a space must be small and intimate.

The second way we engage children’s interest is through teachable moments. For the young especially, the whole world is filled with wonder and can serve as a starting point for learning science, social studies and math. 

So, what can you do? Well, I would say start by noticing what interests your childen and build on that knowledge. They love bugs? Cool! So do I. Let’s see where they live! They live in plants. What do insects do for the plants? What do the plants do for the insects? Suddenly, we move from creepy crawlies to pollination or some other ecological subject. Make sense? Good. Now, go ignite your kids’ interest in nature! 

Posted by Josh Steffen

Limited Choice - Hmmm…What To Do

I am writing a series of posts about eight principles of education integrated into the design and activities of Hershey Children’s Garden and how you can use these principles with your little green thumbs.

Principle number two: let those kids run wild. Let them do absolutely whatever they want to do. The sky is the limit! Or should it be? Most of us do not fare well creatively without some parameters and some sense of definition. "Don’t give all the possibilities, just give me the best ones," I can hear myself saying. Anyone who has walked onto a university campus without a declared major knows the paralyzing feeling of not knowing where to start.

The Children’s Garden is designed to give visitors limited free choice. There is a fence surrounding the entire Garden with only one way in and one way out. There is also one wide path that circumnavigates the entire space. In between, however, there are many small paths connecting different parts of the big loop. Children can take whatever avenue they want. They are free to explore within the given parameters.

The same idea can be applied to gardening activities, too. Most kids have no idea what a gardener does, so give them some options:

"Want to plant a many-colored vegetable garden?"

"Want to plant some seeds?"

"Today, you can choose to do the weeding or the composting."

"Where do plants get their energy?" (There is a reason why kids and adults both like multiple choices!)

Until next time, what gardening options have you given your kids today? You do not have to wait until spring to start!!

You could give your kids the options of:

1. Windowsill gardens

2. Painting flower pots for the spring

3. Having them research and plan a flower or vegetable bed, including buying the seed

4. Getting down on the worm farm

5. Reading a good gardening book (Shameless plug: The Eleanor Squire Library at Cleveland Botanical Garden has excellent storybook options!)

Movement - Let Them Do the Doing

Last post, I hinted at good things to come. I mentioned that Hershey Children’s Garden was designed and built around eight educational principles that work. Those eight principles are: 

• Movement
• Limited choice
• Interest enhances learning
• Avoid extrinsic rewards
• Social education is effective
• Meaningful context assists
• Adult interaction
• Evaluation

Let’s start with Movement. Many of these principles make common sense when you think about them. Kids learn through movement. The Children’s Garden offers many avenues kids can move through and explore. For example, there is nothing like walking through the woods to understand a forest’s many layers. Nothing conveys concepts like "over" and "under" more than actually acting out the words.

Kids learn by being able to manipulate their environment for themselves. By turning over rocks and watering flowers, kids learn things we adults can never teach them.

I am learning to incorporate dance and motion into how I interact with kids. Try making up a planting-a-seed dance with your children sometime.

Kids learn through play. So let them experiment, dig in, and mess up. Let them do the doing.

Posted by Josh Steffen