I just got back from helping in my son's 4th grade class. I garden. I love to garden. My son's teacher asked if I would help the kids put in a small garden outside the classroom, so of course I said yes. It has been a wonderful experience.
We decided to do a Native American Three Sisters garden, which consists of corn, beans, and squash, with sunflowers grown also. I told the kids about the legend of the three sisters, and explained how the three plants grown help each other like the three sisters in the legend did. I talked about companion planting and organic gardening and natural pest control in the garden. The kids ate this stuff up. They loved it! Then they each were assigned an area and they had to plan what to plant and diagram it. We traipsed outside and planted seeds.
One exciting thing about this whole experience is that the kids actually used some of the knowledge they are gaining in school. We talked about ecosystems when discussing companion planting. We used geometry to plan the gardens out. They are documenting the planting of the garden. In about 30 days we will harvest some of our plants and have a class salad consisting of lettuce, radishes, onions, and peas that we grew. The corn, beans, squash, and herbs will grow throughout the summer and the kids can check on it. I liked this day a lot.