A small public school in the Sierra Norte region of Puebla, Mexico, recently won a prestigious state award for its organic garden, which has produced much more than fruits and vegetables; it has also taught the community about nutrition, agricultural practices and improved entrepreneurship.
In a program supported by ChildFund, the school’s garden helps students to learn not only about nutrition and agriculture, but also their indigenous heritage. In Mexico’s northern highlands, much of the population is indigenous, and the program encourages students to talk about gardening, recipes and nutrition with their parents and grandparents in their native language, Nahuatl.
Maria Isabel, 15, has been heavily involved in the project since day one. She was chosen to represent her school in a state held ceremony, where the principal, teachers and students of the school were recognized for their innovative garden.
“With programs like the school garden, a new hope is growing in the community, because we want to learn,” she said.
The garden has medicinal plants, fruits, vegetables, trees and herbs. Maria Isabel is able to recognise each plant, explain its nutritional value, recite recipes it can be used in, and remember how much shade, water and care it needs. Maria Isabel and her classmates also learn the names of the plants in both Spanish and Nahuatl, and recall their full scientific names.
Students’ families also visit the garden and are taught alternative gardening methods, such as how to use old soccer balls, plastic soda bottles and truck tires for planting, to save space.
The program educates families on how fruit and vegetables from the garden can make healthy and nutritious substitutes to their diets, like making vegetable pancakes with bananas and carrots.
“I had never had nopal cactus leaves with steamed onions before the school garden,” says Maria Isabel. “Now they are my favourite and they are rich in Vitamin A.”
Family members can take home some of the produce and are also encouraged to diversify their own gardens from the typical focus on rice and oranges. Furthermore families are beginning to sell surplus produce in roadside stalls, which supplements their incomes and benefits their neighbours and relatives.
The school has even started baking goods with ingredients from their garden and hopes that they will continue to shape a brighter future for their small community.
Pictures often communicate far more efficiently than words, and teachers are discovering that this holds true in the small classrooms of Western India, where children are learning the alphabet and the names of animals, fruits and vegetables through paintings and pictures.
“Earlier, I could not tell the difference between a cabbage and a cauliflower. Now, I know all the fruits and vegetables that we eat,” says 4-year-old Vaishnavi. Vaishnavi is one of the 30 children enrolled in an Early Childhood Development (ECD) centre in the Raigad district of Maharashtra state, India, where ChildFund works in 43 rural villages. “Cauliflower is my favourite vegetable, and it contains many vitamins,” she adds.
Vaishnavi`s best friend, Ashok, is more interested in animals, particularly lions. He uses a story that his teacher told him to explain that the lion is the king of the jungle, “You know, a lion won`t kill other animals if it is not hungry.”
As the program manager of PRIDE India, ChildFund`s local partner organisation in the region, Dr. Virendra Kulkarni believes that young children explore visual art with both a creative and a scientific eye.
“Through art, they not only identify objects and concepts clearly, they also try to explore everything related to them,” he explains. “Wall paintings are one of the best ways to teach children, with the aid of visual expression. Our role is to provide them with materials and inspiration, then to stand back and let them go.”
Shanta Ghatge, a tutor at the ECD centre, agrees: “Wall paintings, posters and other wall decorations not only make the classrooms look great, but they also make learning easy for children and remind them of concepts.”
“We cannot just talk all the time in class,” she explains. “Children need to be stimulated in their learning, and we need such wall paintings, posters and other teaching aids to make their learning interesting”.
Ghatge, who has been an ECD teacher in the area for more than 20 years, says she follows a curriculum adopted by ChildFund which involves the examination of artwork, singing, storytelling, drawing and painting.
“Although the children like almost all the activities, the most popular is definitely creating their own art,” Ghatge says. “I often give out drawing sheets and watercolours and ask them to paint and draw. They just love this activity.”
Research has shown that participating in art, music and storytelling activities helps children develop language, mathematics and social skills. “These essential activities can help the young brain develop to its fullest capacity,” Dr. Kulkarni says. “In all our ECD centres, we use learning methods that are recognized as the best practices for pre-schoolers.”
“One of them is using rhythm to help children develop patterning skills and make relationships between the rhythm, beat and words,” he explains. “There are a lot of local language rhymes that teachers use to improve children`s patterning abilities, while toys and other aids are used to improve their motor skills.”
Ghatge points out that these methods also allow children to have fun in the classroom. “Amidst all this noise, we certainly know one thing: These children are learning while also enjoying their childhoods.”
