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My school, Las Americas Early Education School, is located in the heart of the Mission District of San Francisco and is part of the San Francisco Unified School District. The school reflects the city's cultural and linguistic diversity and provides an environment-based curriculum using the school's garden to connect nature, outdoor learning, and academic success. Until a few years ago, the garden had been neglected and unused, a place where children ventured only by accident and where adults hardly ever set foot. Then, over the span of just a few months and with the help of a mini-grant, the children, my coteachers, and I transformed this unused space into a lively garden.
For me, "science" implies nature and greenery, something alive and thriving-the opposite of what the schoolyard environment offered the children. So I thought it would be a great idea to create with the preschoolers a space to plant, observe, and connect what we grow with some of the foods we eat. In the process, I wanted the children to become acquainted with nature and tap into what Howard Gardner (1999) calls the naturalist intelligence, which too few children in our modern society explore. I had five basic inquiry questions to start my project:
1.How can I improve the science area in my classroom?
2.How can I incorporate science and nature as a daily occurrence in my class?
3. How can I motivate and support the children to create a green space in our school grounds?
4. How can I use the garden as a resource to promote the learning of life science?
5. How can I incorporate my knowledge of teacher inquiry and reflection to improve my science curriculum?
The value of nature education and inquiry for urban preschoolers
The ideas and strategies in this article make visible the benefits of creating, exploring, and studying green spaces with children who live in the city. Most of the children, who range in age from 3 to 5 years old, are bilingual and speak Spanish, Mandarin, or Cantonese as their second language, which are all languages that our teaching staff speak, too. And although most of our conversations are in English, we often use the children's home language to get a better understanding of how...