Gardening preschool? As a homesteading parent that also unschools (child led life-learning), I know just how educational time in the garden can be. Recently, we have been planting our spring garden and identifying plants with the Like That Garden smartphone app. The kids love the time in the sun and there is never a shortage of things to explore and learn about.
Editors note – Our family LOVES the iNaturalist App for plant identification!
Introducing a Gardening Preschool
With the educational and enriching nature of gardening in mind, a group of designers from Rome, Italy has developed “Nursery Fields Forever”, a preschool of sorts that brings together urban farming and nursery education.
More from the Homestead Guru:
- How to Choose the Best Pot for Your Container Garden(Opens in a new browser tab)
- 7 Simple DIY Root Cellars – Keep Your Food Fresh With No Electricity(Opens in a new browser tab)
- BioIntensive Gardening – How to Double Dig, Make Compost, & Companion Plant(Opens in a new browser tab)
- The Trick (and Treat): How to Grow Giant Pumpkins(Opens in a new browser tab)
Catering to the youngest of children, the farming school focuses on three distinct types of learning: learning from nature, learning from technique, and learning from practice. In addition to gardening, children will tend to livestock and learn how to interact with animals as well as use and learn about renewable energy. Throughout these activities, children will improve their social skills with teamwork and team-building exercises.
More from the Homestead Guru:
- Unschooling and “Child-Led Learning” Defined(Opens in a new browser tab)
- Road Schooling: Ditch the Classroom and Learn from the World(Opens in a new browser tab)
According to Edoardo Capuzzo Dolcetta, the gardening preschool will have open spaces with vegetables and animals instead of closed-in classrooms. The physical layout of the school will consist of clusters of buildings that overlook and intermix with a variety of different gardens and livestock pens.
As a recent study found, gardening leads to better health and a more active lifestyle in children. With the growth of schools like this gardening preschool throughout the world, more and more children will grow up around food and livestock. They will most certainly pass their love of nature and sustainability on to their surrounding community.
We look forward to learning more about this exciting opportunity for the youth of the globe.
What country are you “un-schooling” in? I would like to do the same here but believe it is illegal in Australia to non have them in some form of schooling, including home-schooling. My daughter is diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum and has problems dealing with children her own age in highschool. She desperately wants to be home schooled and I believe she would really benefit from learning life skills rather than algebra and history etc
You can home school in Australia.
Look into getting your daughter out of the system and then you can do whatever you want. When I was a child, my mother enrolled me in an online homeschooling program. All of my public school records were sent to the school that was running the online program. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t actually doing any of the school work that was being sent to me, it was just important to the public school system that I was ‘enrolled in a credited school’. Good luck!
Thanks for asking I had the exact same question. Another though, what about socialisation? We’re a small family unit 3 hours from nearest cousin and my son is an only child. I feel school will give him much needed time with kids his own own age but I hate what the public grading system does to self esteem. How do you combat the social aspect?
We just stay very social! We attend homeschool events, and currently live on a property that has 4 families with unschooled kids, its amazing!
I am a homeschooling homesteader, on a mountainside in the middle of nowhere in eastern Tennessee. My husband and I moved here 9 years ago, and our closest family is 8 1/2 hours away. Our town is TINY, and everyone has known each other since birth…. it’s a tough clique to join. There are time compromises that help with “socialization”, like joining my local homeschool group, and enrolling the kids in activities like sports and music lessons… but the biggest thing, for me, was realizing that schools are a microcosm in which “socializing” is artificial. There is no other environment… Read more »
Wow, thank your this <3
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