My Secret Garden

While teaching area and perimeter, I wanted to have a more hands-on, designer approach. My idea was to have my students create their own gardens and calculate both area and perimeter. The requirements were 4 flower beds, 4 vegetable beds, and 4 fruit beds. They were also encouraged to add decorative touches like fountains, walkways, benches, etc. The collaborative effort was astounding and they really enjoyed themselves while learning the concepts. I used square inch graph paper (comes in the size of chart paper) and this really made their projects pop! It was wonderful seeing how proud they were of their gardens! Even better yet, it was completely applicable to our field trip yesterday to Hard Bargain Farm. We toured their garden that was full of vegetable, herb, and flower beds!