My garden

Make sure the children are comfortable and relaxed while sitting in a circle.

Start a discussion with them about responsibility with the help of the following questions:

❖     What is responsibility?

❖     What are you responsible for in your school and at home?

❖     Is it hard to be responsible? Why?

❖     The responsibilities you mentioned earlier, did you choose them or were they assigned to you by somebody else?

❖     Why do you think you were assigned to those responsibilities?

❖     Have you ever heard of the word accountability?

❖     For example: she is accountable for her actions.

❖     What do you think it means?

If the children don’t know the definition of accountability, explain to them that it is: obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions.

Ask the group who understands this definition and then ask that child to explain it to the rest of the group and give an example.

If the children are having a hard time understanding the concept, give them an example of their everyday life (like homework or a situation where they admit they did something wrong or when they volunteer to do a certain task) or a situation that really happened in your classroom.

❖     Is there a difference between responsibility and accountability?

After a discussion, announce to the children they will be involved in a long term project.

Let the children choose which plant they want to grow. Offer them plants that produce vegetables such as different types of tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, eggplants…

Their task is to research all the needs of their selected plant in order to grow vegetables (type of soil, how much water and sunlight it needs,  types of fertilizers they can bring from home like eggshells, coffee beans, water in which vegetables were cooked, composting...).

Plant the seeds together and in the next period of plant life, each child will be responsible for the growth of their own plant (preferably in the classroom).

The goal is to harvest the vegetables from the plants.

Tell children to name their plant and make observations on its growth and needs.

If the plant withers, explore why it happened.

❖     Was the child accountable for that or perhaps the seed was too weak?

The same role goes for children that manage to grow a vegetable.

❖     Are they accountable for the appearance of delicious vegetables from the plant?

If the plants give vegetables approximately at the same time, make a delicious salad with those vegetables. Or the children can take home their vegetables to include them in a family meal.

When the project is over, ask the children: can they tell what their responsibility and accountability for the plants were?

If you want to implement this workshop online, then teach each child how to grow their plant at home.

Ensure they make notes of plant progress and ask parents not to intervene in the process of taking care of the plant.

If possible, choose organic seeds and soil in order to raise awareness not only about the importance of eating vegetables, but also about the type of seeds from which we grow our vegetables (for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY2NLqlS9j8)