We can offer teachers and schools in our community a wide variety of resources to add to to their educational toolbox! Whether you’re coming to learn something new to teach your students, or bringing the students out for a one of a kind, safe, outdoor experience, Parker Learning Garden strives to provide an array of activities, lessons and workshops to bring out the outdoor enthusiast in everyone. We strive to incorporate STEAM and Next Generation Science Standards in everything we do. We can provide an age appropriate learning environment for all ages, backgrounds, experience levels and more!
Teachers email us from your school email at to get your TEACHER DISCOUNT!
TEACHER EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES:
Schedule a private session with a group of your fellow teachers/staff for any of our Workshops specially geared toward teaching those who educate youth.
- Pigs in the Garden – We will give a deeper understanding of how we raise animals ethically and in a way that helps our land, our health and our planet. Covering topics such as organic pest control, unique characteristics of pigs and why they are good gardeners, how pigs can help sequester carbon and promote soil regeneration. We talk about how the diet of pigs is very similar to what people need and why its important to feed them a more diverse diet beyond conventional pig feed, especially if you’re going to eat them. This leads to discussion of buying meat locally and the many reasons that are important for our health and our planet. (Our pigs are not raised for meat, they are some of the hardest working gardeners we have!)
- Seasonal Food Gardening 101 – The goal for this workshop is to provide the community the knowledge to grow and provide food for their table all year round. This increases the nutritional content of the food consumed by eating it fresher, you also know where your food comes from (and that there were no chemicals used on them). You will learn how to plant in succession, what crops can be planted intermixed with others, and how to write a garden plan that enables you to have something to harvest any time of the year. We will then discover the benefits of learning to grow your own food and how that can increase your families health, but also contribute to you doing your part in saving our planet.
- Bamboo Forest Exploration & Crafting – Come learn about the fastest growing member of the grass family and be transported into a whole new world in our 3 acre Bamboo Forest. You will discover why bamboo is one of the most important plants to grow due to it’s high growth rate. It is one of the best sources for making biochar, as it pulls the most amount of carbon out of the atmosphere for locking it into the soil for upwards of thousands of years! We will explain the huge benefits of becoming carbon negative on a planet where society has largely given up hope that we can defeat global warming.
- Soil Regeneration & Biochar Creation – Learn about the vital soil underneath our feet and how to reverse the depletion of nutrients in it. We will look at some basic compost compositions, how microbes and organisms help with nutrient availability (like worms and fungi), and we will fill the Biochar Kiln and have a grand time watching it burn with minimal oxygen and big flames! Learn about why soil regeneration is important, and how carbon sequestration can help save the planet!
FIELD TRIPS / CLASSROOM VISITS
We have a large 33 acre farm with plenty of space for larger groups. Discover what we can offer for you current lesson or what we can provide as a whole:
- Tour the Farm: Meander through our Demonstration Gardens, Hazelnut Orchards, Fruit Orchards, and Bamboo Forest learning all about why we do what we do.
- Discover and Craft: Learn about and observe native bees and build a native bee houses for the school grounds. See and learn about gourd plants, then craft and decorate gourd birdhouses to hang outside the classroom window. Harvest broomcorn…