New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
East Shoreline Catholic Academy to Take Gardening To A Whole New Level!
East Shoreline Catholic Academy (ESCA) received an innovation grant from the Archdiocese of Hartford. This grant funds the development of ESCA’s Laudato Si’ Learning Lab (LSLL). Laudato Si’ is the second encyclical of Pope Francis. This encyclical has the subtitle “on care of our common home.” Plans are currently underway for a garden, an outdoor classroom, outdoor makerspace, and prayer garden space providing a landscape to support the education of the whole child in faith and social emotional well-being. LSLL will expand the curriculum to an outdoor space. Students will engage in hands-on learning across all subjects using a STREAM framework, providing project-based learning opportunities.
First grade teacher and grant co-writer, Cara Moore, leads the development of the makerspace and garden, “Extending the learning space outdoors helps students to become stewards of God’s creation and provides project-based learning opportunities that reach multiple learning styles. Not all students learn the same way. This outdoor learning space will educate the whole child through faith and hands on learning.”
Our LSLL garden will also teach students to improve their nutrition and learn about their local food chain (i.e., to plant, to grow, and to harvest fruits and vegetables using sustainable methods from farm to table).
For young learners, outdoor learning through play is crucial to their socioemotional learning, cognitive development, physical health, and wellbeing. This outdoor makerspace will provide hands-on opportunities for our students. We learn best by doing, by making, by engaging in conversations and collaborative hands-on projects that
integrate interdisciplinary skills and curriculum content. Project-based learning and community building activities will take place in this outdoor space and expand our students’ knowledge of life science by observing, describing, and discussing the natural world, living things, and natural process.
The prayer garden will be a sacred space where students can become connected to God’s creation. In addition to the practice of stewardship through the vegetable garden, the prayer garden will provide a space for prayer and reflection. The garden can be used for personal or group prayer, religion class, adoration, and reflection.
The renovation of an existing building on the property into an outdoor makerspace will include workstations suitable for our PreK through grade 8 classes. This space will be an extension of ESCA’s current indoor makerspace, which is a place for students to work collaboratively for designing, building, learning, exploring, and sharing that uses high tech to no tech tools, including 3D printers, tools, recyclable materials, and even sewing machines.
Students are currently underway in several projects: Our preK and kindergarten students have been learning
about windowsill planting, greenhouse planting, and ladybugs and butterflies. Grades 1 through 5 are learning hydroponic gardening, composting, decomposition (worms) and recycling (kitchen scrap gardening), and types of plants and signs. Grades 6 through 8 are learning about fertilizing, watering, gardening beds, and soil. Our seventh and eighth grade students have already crafted designs for LSLL, utilizing the engineering design process. These prototypes will guide the design of the outdoor space enabling students to see their work come to life Pictured are some of our seventh grade students with their 3-D model prototypes.
Ultimately, LSLL will extend the ESCA community outside the school grounds and provide opportunities to engage our students, parents, parishes, local communities, and alumni, while increasing student appreciation for environmental stewardship through participation in our three parishes and local food sharing programs, and furthering to support ESCA’s mission as a dynamic PreK-Gr.8 STREAM school, preparing individual students to be our future leaders rooted in faith, service, and academic excellence.