Students Explore Their Senses at the GrowNYC Teaching Garden

October 19, 2023

Aspiring scientists in kindergarten and first grade have been learning about the five senses as a means to understand their importance in scientific exploration, advancement, and inquiry. 

To bring these lessons to life, students took a visit to the GrowNYC Teaching Garden on Governors Island on Wednesday, October 18th. While there, students enjoyed hands-on activities at three different stations that tasked them with utilizing different combinations of their senses.

In the garden, students used their senses of smell, taste, and touch while learning about an array of seasonal crops, herbs, and flowers (like sorrel, aloe, marigolds, tomatoes, and lamb’s ear). Another station helped students learn about the process of decomposition while as they felt for worms in small containers of soil. And at the final station, students used their senses of touch, smell, and taste to enjoy hummus made with fresh ingredients from the teaching garden itself.

While each station differed in purpose and execution, the trip as a whole provided students with an immersive experience to learn more about the world around them. To that end, a core part of the kindergarten and first grade science curriculum is the exploration of different habitats. Below is a summary of a few of the curricular standards students engage with in the classroom, by grade level:

Kindergarten

-- Using observational skills to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive.

-- Constructing arguments, supported by evidence, to explain how plants and animals (including humans) can change their environments to meet their needs.

-- Using models to represent the relationship between the needs of different plants and animals (including humans) and the places they live.

Grade 1

-- Learning how plants and/or animals use their bodies to survive, grow, and meet their needs.

-- Making observations at different times of year to relate the amount of daylight that we may experience to the time of year.

To learn more about Léman’s Lower School curriculum, click here.