Captain Planet Foundation’s innovative Project Learning Garden provides schools with strategies for building effective and sustainable garden-based learning programs. By the end of 2014, the program will have 110 Project Learning Garden schools in its hometown of Atlanta, Georgia (Atlanta Public Schools and Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett Public School Systems) and10 schools in a pilot program in Ventura County, Calif.
The goal of Project Learning Garden is to: integrate school gardens with core subject lessons; connect gardens to school cafeterias; help students develop an affinity for nature and an early palate for fruits and vegetables; and increase teacher capacity for providing project-based learning for students.
On Sept. 15th, CPF launched a partnership with Pratt Industries which will allow any U.S. elementary school [with an existing garden] to download free Project Learning Garden standards-based lessons AND order the classroom lesson supply kits at cost (about $500 for 3 lessons per grade K-5). Schools can also order the Project Learning Garden mobile cooking cart at cost (also about $725 – shipping included). Pratt [America’s fifth-largest corrugated packaging company] is donating the management of the e-commerce site as well as ordering, housing assembling, and shipping the lesson kits to partnering schools. For more information, please visit http://www.projectlearninggarden.com/