This is an experiment to find out how fast a banana peel rots or decomposes over time in three different environments: in a vermicompost bin, in garden soil and just on it’s own. Students will understand the role of red wiggler worms in vermicomposting and why vermicomposting is beneficial. They'll also learn about other ways that organic matter decomposes (outdoor composting and bacteria.)

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Discover how ecosystems work. Students will learn about ecosystems by building a bottle ecosystem and observing what happens. An ecosystem is a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in a particular area. Ecosystems also contain non-living components like rocks and landscape, and are affected by sun, weather, temperature, humidity and water. Everything in an ecosystem is linked by nutrient cycles and energy flows. 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Students will discover how to grow plants without using soil in a system called hydroponics. Hydroponics is a way to grow plants without soil. Hydroponics meets all the plant’s needs for L.A.W.N.S. (light, air, water, nutrients, space.) 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Are dandelions in season where you live? We all recognize those bright yellow blooms in early spring. Some call them weeds, but dandelions may surprise you. There are lots of uses for dandelions. Let’s learn more! Did you know they are edible?! Yes, the root, leaves, stem and flowers are allsafe to eat raw. Harvest some dandelions with your class and try one of these fun recipes.

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Discover how capillary action works with the Walking Water Experiment. Students will learn about capillary action. Plants couldn’t survive without capillary action. Capillary action is when a liquid, like water, moves up something solid, like a tube or into a material with a lot of small holes. Capillary action works against gravity because of three special forces called cohesion, adhesion and surface tension. 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

In this activity students will dissect a seed and investigate the different parts. Seeds come in many shapes, sizes and colours, but many share the same basic parts. If done in groups, students may observe the similarities or differences of many different seeds. Lima beans or large bean seeds work best for this activity. 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Students will brainstorm how the food they eat moves from farm to fork. Students will recognize that the food we eat starts on the farm. Brainstorm the steps our food takes to go from farm to fork.

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

This project is about growing flowering plants from bulbs. Bulbs usually emerge in early spring after a cold winter, bringing us leaves and lovely flowers. Can we get bulbs to bloom at other times? Bulbs can be “forced” to grow and flower in winter if they are chilled for a number of weeks, followed by giving them growing conditions that mimic springtime. 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Practice making basic and/or advanced 2 dimensional geometric shapes with carrot sticks! This activity introduces basic and advanced geometric shapes and their names to students. 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Start exploring around your indoor/outdoor garden and collect the items from the scavenger hunt list. Don’t forget to mark each item off as you find them. Have students put all their items in a bucket and compare their objects to their friends’ once they’ve found them all! Happy hunting!

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Germination tests are a quick and fun way to find out if your seeds are still viable to grow! This test can tell you how well your seeds will grow based on what percentage of your seeds germinate (or sprout). In this experiment children will learn what a seed needs to germinate as well as its important role in the plant life cycle.

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

How do plants know which way is up or down? In this project, you'll explore why roots grow straight down. How do roots grow when the direction of gravity changes? Do you think you can "trick" roots to grow in a different direction? 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Seeds are not the only way to grow a vegetable. Some plants like sweet potato can be grown from a tuber. Sweet potatoes are easy to grow from a tuber and a good way for students to learn about roots and shoots. Make drawings of your sweet potato experiment. One drawing when you start growing your sweet potato, another in 3weeks and the last one in 6 weeks. What differences do you notice?

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Have you ever wondered how water moves upward from the roots to the leaves of a plant? How does water get all the way up to the top of a tall tree? In this lesson, students will learn about how water moves through a plant.

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

When we want to measure length, we use a ruler. If we want to know what time it is, we use a clock. To measure temperature, we use a thermometer. Keeping track of weather is a fun school or family activity. Students will learn to read a thermometer and to make observations about temperature.

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Your students can grow vegetables and herbs from items you'd normally throw in your compost bucket. With little effort and a pinch of creativity you can devise some very imaginative indoor gardens from your kitchen leftovers! Kids love this idea and it's a great way to reinforce the sustainable living concepts of recycling and reusing.

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Students will learn the important parts that make up a bean seedling and label them. Colour in the page after you label the parts! 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

What would our lives be like without plants? In this activity, students are thinking about everyday items made from plants and what life would be like without them. Which items that we use everyday are made from plants? Plants are in so many items we use everyday. The purpose of this activity is to think about items which are made from plants. Check ingredient lists or clothing tags to learn more, or look up items on line with the students and explore together. Figure out which part of a plant is used to make that item. 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Light blocking experiment. What happens when you block light from a plant? Cut various shapes in aluminum foil and attach shapes to the leaf of a plant using paper clips. Leave the plant for a week and see what happens! The second part of this is coating the underside of a few leaves vaseline to starve it of carbon dioxide. This shows students carbon dioxide is also needed for photosynthesis and demonstrates effects similar to starving it of light.

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

A new twist on planting seeds! In this activity, students make a “living necklace” that they can wear home or display in the classroom. This is a fantastic activity to kick off a plant unit or introducing the stages of plant growth and development. Numerous opportunities for plant knowledge extend beyond this lesson.

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Plants are so much a part of our daily lives that we often don't give them much thought! In this project students will go through magazines and find items made from plants. Once these are found the students can make a collage of all the items they found. This is a fun, easy activity to teach students that plants are everywhere! 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Make your own rain gauge and track how much rain falls in your backyard. On average, a vegetable or flower garden or lawn needs about 3 cm of rainfall per week. Look at your rainfall records. Is your garden getting enough water? If not, a rain gauge can help you decide if you need to water your garden with a hose. 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

The roots of a plant serve many important functions, such as absorbing water and nutrients, anchoring the plant in place and storing food. Making your own root viewer is a simple way for students to observe plant roots up close. Students can monitor and track growth daily or make observations and predictions in their journals. 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

They’re tiny and annoying: minuscule black flies that swirl in your face when your plants are disturbed or open your worm bin. So hard to see that you’re not even sure it happened. What are they and how do you get rid of them? The usual suspects are either fungus gnats or fruit flies. They’re both tiny and can be hard to tell apart. Let’s look at what they are, what they do and learn how to tell the difference. 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

An experiment to test if a plant can find its way through a box maze towards light. Will the sprout go around obstacles in the box to find its way out of the maze? Phototropism is an evolutionary adaptation that helps plants to move access light needed forphotosynthesis.

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Students will observe the production of oxygen by a plant by submerging a leaf underwater and observing oxygen bubbles form. In part 2, students will conduct a small experiment to see if the amount of light a plant receives affects the production of oxygen by plants. This experiment can be kept very simple for younger students to observe that plants produce oxygen or can be used as an exploration of photosynthesis for older students. Students can expand on their understanding of photosynthesis. 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Create your own plants at home while using items around the house! If you don’t have any seeds or soil, this is a perfect activity! Students will learn about the three R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) and demonstrate their learning about plant parts. 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

Students will act out the process of a seed sprouting. This is a great activity for teaching the life cycle of plants, and can be used as a body break from other activities! 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

This project is a simple demonstration that plants release water vapour through their leaves. Transpiration is the movement of water through a plant's system. Transpiration helps to cool the plant and the Earth; works together with respiration; and keeps plants upright. 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.

The natural growth of basil is tall and if not pruned, the plant will grow tall and leggy. Pruning causes the side shoots to grow and you end up with a fuller, bushier plant. In a LGT indoor garden this is important because a pruned basil plant fits better under the lighting, giving it more light for photosynthesis. Besides, a bushy plant looks good and produces more basil for your students to taste and sample! Students will learn about this phenomenon by comparing two basil plants, one that is pruned and one that is left to grow naturally 

This is a publicly available resource developed by the Little Green Thumbs program, a classroom gardening program. Learn more about the Little Green Thumbs program in your region.