Source: Tengchong Laoqiaotou preschool teacher Gao Huanping

I'm Kele, I'm five years old, and at the end of the summer I went to school at Laoqiaotou preschool, where I had my first piece of land in my life.

It's not a big land, it's within our preschool's yard. Every day after lunch we would walk around the vegetable field several times, look at the seeds we planted a few days ago to see if they have sprouted and feel the fence around our garden to see if it is holding.

This is not the first time I've seen this vegetable field. As early as two weeks before the start of the school year, I came with my grandmother and carried my little hoe to "deal with” it.

Near the beginning of the school year, all of the parents in our preschool class got involved in building this vegetable garden as well. We weeded and dug together. ...... The garden is a joint effort of all of us, and everyone treats it as a "Children's paradise".

When the school year started, I was proud to have a piece of land when Mrs. Gao took me and the children to plant our first seeds by hand.

After a busy afternoon, seedlings were transplanted and seeds were sown in the garden. Mrs. Gao said that all of us will take care of this garden from now on, and we need to water and loosen the soil regularly every day.

Something this interesting needs to be recorded, of course. Don't worry, for our preschool class, Mrs. Gao has her own little trick.

"Drawing diary" is the best way to record the changes in our vegetable patch - by observing every day, we need to draw and paint the growth process of the plants.

As we record, the cabbage, coriander, bok choy and pea shoots in the vegetable garden ...... were growing up.  Mrs. Gao told my mum and dad that learning is not just confined to the classroom, nature and the fields can teach us a lot.

I think Mrs. Gao is right. Since I have this land, I have not only taken up the responsibility of taking care of the vegetable garden, but I have also learnt about the methods and techniques of sowing and transplanting, how to water the vegetables, the growing process of different vegetables and the different characteristics of different plants.

If I sit in the classroom all the time, I will not learn these things

Kele has a field in the precshool and it is a treasure trove of knowledge and living material for all.

Returning to real-life scenarios, education is made more interesting, valuable and meaningful through diverse planting activities.

Project introduction:

Tengchong POF is funded by Tin Ka Ping Foundation, and HPP cooperates with Tengchong Education and Sports Bureau to assist in the implementation of the "One village, One preschool" policy. The project takes early education as the entry point, improves the hardware facilities and teaching aids of preschool classes and organizes professional and systematic training for teachers regularly. The project team regularly supervises preschool classes to help teachers solve difficulties and problems in daily teaching activities. In addition, the preschool classes have set up the parent committee, carried out parent training and promoted preschool-home co-education. The project focuses on game-based teaching, provides tools such as teacher management kits and teaching materials, improves the coverage of preschool education in rural areas, and improves the quality of preschool education in rural areas, so that more children can receive high-quality preschool education.

This project is supported by the Tin Ka Ping Foundation.

This article represents the views of the author and does not represent the views or positions of the donor.