Drink a rainbow

Posted on January 27, 2016 by kidsingardens

An effective phrase for teaching nutrition to children is “eat a rainbow!” The simple idea is that eating fruits and veggies of all different colors builds a healthy diet. We made this a theme on Food Day 2015, and I want to keep building upon it.

Sage Garden has provided us with their notebook of recipes which includes a different color smoothie for each grade. I pulled all of the different colors and am doing “Drink a rainbow!” workshops for my after school students.

I began by setting up the Sage Garden cooking cart with all of the equipment and ingredients laid out and the recipe written on the whiteboard.

Then I gave each pair of students a stack of laminated fruit and vegetable cards produced by the California Department of Education. The students sorted the fruits and veggies into two piles: orange/yellow and other. We talked about all the orange and yellow examples we found.

Students came up one by one for the various jobs: juicing the oranges, peeling the bananas, pressing the limes, adding the strawberries, measuring out the yogurt.

The next week we did purple smoothies, and this week we will blend up red ones. As you can imagine, it’s a very popular class!

Last garden tour of 2015

Posted on December 31, 2015 by kidsingardens

Before we head into the new year, here’s a glimpse of the fun we had and the work we did in the school garden in November and December—aka my periodic “Garden Tour.”

Leaf rubbings in garden class made sweet placemats for “Take your parent to lunch” in the garden.

Following up on the “How is it grown?” video the students watched on Food Day, we made a simple cranberry relish with orange juice and local honey.

While the cranberries cooked, we worked on updating our garden journals—-decorating the covers with images from garden catalogues and inserting recipes and other lesson materials from the last couple months.

Miss Sally Snipes gave us a bushel of daffodils to add to the garden. To make this a fun activity, I called the class “Bulbs and Bubbles.” After planting a few bulbs, students got to blow bubbles…then back to the bulbs….and then bubbles…

I took the portable speaker out to the garden to play Christmas music as students went wild decorating the garden. Where could they hang ornaments? Anywhere they could reach.

For out last garden class in December, the younger grades made tangerine pomanders—a highly sensory, fine motor activity.

Older students do an activity that is now a bit of tradition around the holidays: wreath making with freshly cut cedar and rosemary sprigs.

Freezing weather sent us inside for a few garden classes. Here students measured out their own healthy trail mix and munched on it while we played garden bingo.

Anticipating a lot of cold, wet weather to come, I am now thinking through new inside garden projects and activities for the rest of the winter.

More to come in the new year: our visit from Americorps and garden fashion! Thanks for following along in 2015! And thanks for sharing my love and enthusiasm for “all the good things that happen in school gardens.” Happy New Year!

Stuffed and Happy: Food Day 2015

Posted on November 23, 2015 by kidsingardens

Before the really big Food Day is upon us, I’d like to share some glimpses of Food Day 2015 at Julian Elementary and Julian Junior High. It was a minimum day, and we had 15 workshops between the two campuses. Students went to 5-6 of them for thirty minutes each.

In the weeks before the event, I began making this “eat a rainbow” collage with after school students, using photos from seed catalogues:

It turned out really cool:

It was too wet and windy to hang it in front of the school as planned (along with two huge banners that read “Eat a Rainbow Every Day!”) so it became a nice backdrop for a storybook and craft session on the importance of eating foods of all different colors for a healthy diet.

The UC Farm Smart joined us for the third year running, and as usual, they delivered a visual, hands-on, super engaging lesson. This year’s topic: carrots.

Students used orange dots to conduct a poll after a taste test: fresh carrots, canned carrots or no carrots at all.

Another wildly popular instructor, Chef Greg from Healthy Adventures Foundation taught kids how to make vegetarian sushi.

A superteam of teachers, present and former (Lark, Nancy, Kathy, Shirley) presented lessons on “eating a rainbow.” A mini-lesson on the health benefits of each color was followed by fruit and veggie bingo and fruit kabobs—kids that ate all the colors left with a little rainbow sticker on their shirts.

Food Day would not be Food Day without Teak and Harvey representing for the Julian Apple Growers with apple pressing for juice and apple slice taste tests.

The amazing folks from Camp Stevens led a composting workshop, demonstrating their teaching flexibility by switching from the garden to the cafeteria when it started to pour, hauling in mounds of unsifted compost and wheelbarrows.

Mrs. Croman, our music teacher, leading “food songs.”

Not pictured: Ann from the Resource Conservation District teaching a lesson about monarch butterflies and the importance of protecting pollinators.

Meanwhile down at the junior high:

From the mind of our ag specialist, Mr. Martineau: Students walk through eight stations, tracing all of the parts of a pizza to their origins and making little pizzas as they go. Each station had information, questions and a short video about the bread, sausage, tomato sauce, etc.

Presenting the Duffy Cooking Show! How cool is it that kids were making homemade granola bars with their principal and superintendent?

Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Tellez pulled off an amazing workshop on cheese: a history of cheese, cheesemaking, cheese tasting/rating and looking at yogurt under the microscope.

Every student did an art project with Sun Dog Studios. See last post.

Students had a chance to talk to Joel and Chef Jeremy, who plan and cook their school lunch. Joel and Jeremy talked to the kids about the mechanics and nutrition involved in planning a NSLP-approved lunch, and students provided them with feedback about the menu.

Not pictured: Students watched 5 short videos from the very cool video series How does it grow?

All that, and we fit in an apple crunch on both campuses! Later that day, afterschool students toured Mom’s Pies and each made an apple dumpling….

Thanks to all who contributed to this truly awesome day of learning! See you next year.

Now for a nap.

The Great Julian Apple Crunch

Video

Today Julian Elementary and Junior High celebrated National Food Day with 15 workshops on nutrition, cooking, backyard gardening and agriculture. It was amazing—look for upcoming posts with photos and stories.

For now, let me share a video with you. Every year people across the country celebrate good, fresh food with an Apple Crunch event. We did one this year, thanks to Ken and Linda Limon who visited a neighboring orchard whose owners allowed them to harvest for free, picked 400 apples, hand sorted them, packed them in flats of 50 and delivered them to cold storage in the school kitchen. We washed and bagged them by class size. Students wore their red No Excuses shirts to school, Garden Ambassadors held up big leaves, and our principal got on the roof to film the event. The weather was sketchy today but it held just long enough…..five minutes later, downpour! Simply amazing.

Thank you Linda and Ken—you made this happen!

September/October garden tour (aka photo dump)

Posted on October 14, 2015 by kidsingardens

Every month or so I like to walk around the garden and catch y’all up on new things, beginning this month with our “farm to school” banners which Mr. Wells just hung outside the after school club. This set features produce grown in San Diego County in the fall. They add a lively, colorful element to this outside eating/studying area.

My Garden Ambassadors are a hardworking group. These two take charge of lunchtime composting.

They love leaving me notes—a habit I encourage by leaving them notes back.

Mr. Copeland stops by as the K/1st graders were showing off our new set of gloves in after school garden class.

Lots of cool season planting due to having lots of space due to our spectacularly lousy summer crop:

In after school class, sometimes we just play games in the garden. With everyone occupied with fun stuff at the table, I can pull one or two students out for small jobs or teachable moments.

We have been making cinnamon maple applesauce in our longer format classes during the school day.

I’ve been printing the recipe in Thursday’s bulletin. If students make it at home, they send me a photo, and I invite them to enjoy lunch in the school garden with friends.

At school:

At home:

Finally, I’ve slowly been collecting “seasonal touches” to decorate the garden. I saw this years ago at a school garden in San Fransisco when our garden was just getting started, and it was too much to consider at the time. But now, I’m ready. Garage sales are a great place to find decor out of season. This came from the Methodist Church’s rummage sale, and I think it adds a lovely autumn touch. (Also, I bought the over-the-door wreath hanger which keeps the arrangement in place.)

Garden Ambassadors wanted to put up Halloween decorations so they hung webs and spiders—appropriate for the garden!

Up next: Why is Mrs. Tree crying? (Possibly my favorite post ever, next time.)

Thank you Sage Garden Project!

Posted on October 8, 2015 by kidsingardens

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that this year we are working in partnership with the Sage Garden Project who has generously gifted us with funds for a garden educator position, access to their curriculum and a scholarship to the Edible Schoolyard Academy this past summer. (Scroll down to read five posts about that magical experience.) We were thrilled to welcome them to campus two weeks ago for the first time. Garden Ambassadors made this poster for them.

Garden Ambassadors greeted Program Director Dawn Mayeda and Garden Instructor Karen Saake at the front of the school with an apple pie—our local dessert! Then we spent the morning giving them a tour, introducing them around school and receiving items included in the Sage Garden award….

A huge treat that comes with the grant package is a fully equipped cart which can be wheeled around campus for cooking demos. Unpacking all of the items that go in it was like Christmas morning. Here I’ve displayed it all in one place. Notice the mirror flips around to be a white board. Feel free to drool.

Also included in our box of garden treats were beautiful posters and banners which we promptly hung in the garden room and the garden.

Julian Elementary is very proud to be an recipient of a Sage Garden Project grant. Thank you to everyone involved for helping to grow our garden program!

It works, it works, it works!

Posted on September 11, 2015 by kidsingardens

Nutrition/cooking education. Make no mistake: it works.

It’s said all the time but I’m here with hard evidence to prove it: When you grow and cook food with kids at school, in a fun, interactive way, they are more likely to try new foods and want to cook at home.

As mentioned in the last post, we made ratatouille in our garden/kitchen class. I also sent home a letter with the recipe to each family and encouraged the kids to teach their parents the recipe. I said, “If you do make ratatouille at home, please send me a picture.” The very next day I started receiving these:

Once I received the picture, I visited the student’s class with congratulations, a few questions about his/her cooking experience at home, and an invitation to have lunch in the garden that day with a friend. I’m thrilled that at our school “lunch in the garden” is a motivating reward, as it is sometimes hard to think of incentives that aren’t sweets/snacks or little throwaway objects.

None of this is lost on you, dear readers, but allow me to list the levels of goodness here:

-Students have a positive experience with a certain food at school and bring that excitement home.

-Students show off newly acquired skills to parents, and we all know that re-teaching is good learning.

-Families learn new recipes—in this case, one that is vegetarian, seasonal, adaptable and affordable.

-Students are congratulated and rewarded in front of their peers for extending their learning after school.

Many thanks to Wynola Flats for sourcing these delicious vegetables and ordering what I needed. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to stop in yesterday for more ingredients and have Stacy say, “People have been coming in, buying ingredients for ratatouille….”

Food Day Nibbles, part 2

Posted on November 18, 2014 by kidsingardens

To celebrate National Food Day at the end of October, our elementary and junior high schools presented 14 workshops about agriculture, nutrition and cooking to which students rotated all day. Here’s a taste of all of the hands-on learning that happened.

Resource Conservation District of San Diego joined us for the first time to teach kids to make pots out of newspaper and plant herb seeds for windowsill gardens.

Julian schools alumna Jill talked about growing up in Julian, going to UC Santa Cruz and starting her own farm, Mountain Chickadee Farm .

Chef Greg from Healthy Adventures Foundation taught another wonderful cooking class.

Camp Stevens headed up a workshop on making fresh smoothies. Very hands on with the kid-safe knives!

Mr. Martineau led a fun and educational workshop on the use of animal byproducts in everyday products, having students guess ingredients. Also included: how many bug parts in different foods—perfect for junior high!

UC Regent’s Farm Smart program once again joined us and presented another excellent hands-on workshop on corn.

Chef Jeremy from Jeremy’s on the Hill (and Jeremy’s on the Campus, our school lunch program) led a workshop at the junior high, talking about his restaurant and getting feedback from kids about school lunch

Mrs. Croman taught a special music class with food songs!

Kids pressed their own apple juice from local fruit, with help from the Julian Apple Growers Association.

The amazing Mrs. Cantor taught the kids to make sweet and savory crepes. Later in the day volunteers delivered extras to all of the volunteers and staff. Final count: 280 dinner plate sized crepes.

Local family and farm Cook Pigs joined us, talking about their sustainable operation and letting kids interact with their dog and piglet Chewbaca.

Juicing seminars, with the bicycle blender out for a spin!

All students returned to their classrooms to write about the day in their garden journals.

Not pictured: Mr. Pierce showed and discussed food films from the Nourish series, Mr. Duffy taught a food safety class as he and Mr. Lay made chicken-veggies kebabs on the garden’s BBQ, and Miss Carmen led a class on “eating real.”

We also extended Food Day into our after-school program with more cooking classes and a fieldtrip to a local restaurant. I played a memory game with kitchen utensils and followed with a taste test of guavas, papayas, dates, fresh figs, etc.

If you were involved in any way, thank you!!! Will you come again next year? 🙂

Food Day Nibbles, part 1

Posted on November 8, 2014 by kidsingardens

This year both our elementary school and junior high celebrated National Food Day with a full day of workshops on agriculture, nutrition, and cooking. Fourteen experiential sessions spread between the two campuses, dozens of volunteers, and happy, engaged learners everywhere you looked made for a big, wonderful day. So big that I’ve decided to tell the story in little “nibbles.”

In the weeks preceding the event, I had students work on food collages on foam board. We did this during our garden lessons and in the after-school program, using seed catalogues.

I hung the whole collection in front of school to announce the day’s theme.

Younger students also colored these signs……

….which adorned the main walkway.

Afterschool students also made posters to hang around campus:

To be continued….until then, keep calm and eat real. 🙂

Smoothie bike!

Posted on February 5, 2014 by kidsingardens

One of our Farm to School purchases was a bike blender attachment. A regular bike gets hooked up to a stand and a platform with a Vitamix blender. Thirty seconds of pedal power, and you have a full pitcher of smoothie.

We ordered the smoothie apparatus in order to promote healthy snacks at school events. The mountain bike club borrowed the equipment last weekend for the elementary cross-country meet. We used a simple recipe of apple juice, frozen berries, fresh bananas, and ice. Not only did we raise money for our team, but we also had the pleasure of passing out healthy, delicious drinks to kids running their hearts out on a beautiful day in Julian.