OBJECTIVE

Students look through seed catalogues, identify and discuss their favorite fruits and vegetables. The class works together to decide what they’d like to grow.

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

What are your favorite fruits and vegetables? What should we grow in our garden?

MATERIALS NEEDED

• One really nice catalogue for showing the class, e.g. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
• Seed catalogues to look through and a pile of already cut out pictures of different fruits and vegetables (tomatoes, cucumbers, sunflowers, carrots, beans, etc)
• Scissors
• Poster board
• Glue

PROCEDURE

Introduction

Explain to the class that we are going to start to think about our garden. What are our favorite fruits and vegetables? What should we grow in our garden? We are going to look through the seed catalogue and imagine what we might want to grow and cut those things out. (While talking, show pictures of different interesting and beautiful fruits and vegetables from the model catalogue so that they may begin to think about the process.) Do they know what a collage is? Explain that a collage is a collection of pictures put together to make one larger picture or representation of something.

Activity

Have students come over in small groups and begin to look through the pictures. Prompt them with questions about what their favorite fruit or vegetables are and encourage them to find those. Let each student choose 2 to 3 pictures. Ask them if there’s something they’d like to grow that they don’t see in the pile. Glue pictures onto poster board. At the end, have students observe what it looks like their class wants to grow in the garden.

FOLLOW UP & EXTENSIONS

Make a “spring garden” and “summer garden” collage with early crops and warm season crops.
If space is limited in the garden, create a chart with pictures of the different crops they’d like to grow and have each student vote for which one they’d like to grow.