Gardening in K4 at its Highest Peak

After multiple years in oblivion, the K4 garden has come back to life with the help and motivation of K4D students and their teacher Catalina Orozco.

The unknown garden for many is currently an environmental and eco friendly project determined to create consciousness and teach children about the care they must give the planet. Reviving it has been a positive move not only for the world but for the students and people involved.

“There was this garden we were not using so I decided to speak with the gardener [‘Don Héctor’] who told me he could help us. He organized the soil again, fixed the wood frame and taught us how to properly plant. We later went with the children, created tags for the respective vegetable planted and decorated it with paint to make it feel ours,” said Catalina Orozco, K4D homeroom teacher.

The enthusiasm of the students has made this whole process an life changing experience from which many basic skills among them literacy and numeracy have been developed in a fun and ludic way.

“The children have a writing journal where they draw the changes and write some simple words like ‘good’ to say that the garden is going well,” commented Orozco, “It was an excuse for literacy, apart from the writing journal, we also made signs to describe and know what was planted on every spot.”

The project has its benefits apart from school. Now the kids have had the opportunity of taking, the multiple things they have cultivated, home, promoting healthy food habits among their families. Many of them have as well, by their own initiative, began making their own garden and cultivating various things at their houses.

K4D student Mariana Muñoz commented when interviewed, “I’m planning on planting something at my farm…. I really like seeing how the kids take out lettuces and find tiny bugs,” adding that her favorite vegetable in the garden were carrots.

Regardless of what each student found to be the very best thing of the orchard, the whole experience has been an innovative and relevant media to achieve multiple scholar and personal objectives.

“It has been a very nice process, the children have been very happy, very involved and very enthusiastic. Many of them look up to Héctor and state they would like to be gardeners when they grow up,” concluded Orozco.