Adding STEM education

School gardening isn't all about the gardening. Use the rainwater harvesting to create a real life applied math lesson by figuring how much rain can be collected from a certain amount of rainfall. The formula is rainfall x square footage x .63 (gallons per inch). Then divide by the number of gutters. Times by the number of rainwater harvesting tanks.

Or, measure the amount of water used by a drip irrigation system. 

Both of these math lessons are explained by this video we made in 2009; http://extension.arizona.edu/4h/content/video/measuring-water-consumption

Or, incorporate photosynthesis into the plant science lessons as described in this video; http://extension.arizona.edu/4h/content/video/plant-germination-video

However, the real lesson that we found that was valuable in the school gardening experience was the wealth of knowledge youth learned as they shot video footage, designed storyboards, wrote scripts, and developed hands-on videos that taught others. Through the use of technology, youth researched science information that they otherwise would never have learned. 

This journal article was written about the project featured in this blog; Growing Gardens with Captured Rainwater . . . and Video

Read the introduction to the school gardening curriculum that was written this year (all aligned to science standards, available upon request):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yodPs50NEYzS7VaCZgFjHEFaAPCR904jaccC-aJXibM/edit?hl=en_US#

Curriculum Intro