Farm to School Newsletter

This month Buckley's cafeteria taste test was roasted sweet potatoes and they were a great success with 81% of participants voting that they either liked or loved the recipe! Some students even reported that they usually don't like sweet potatoes but they tried them anyway and liked them!

In the classroom, during nutrition lessons, the 1st and 3rd grade students learned about sometimes foods versus everyday foods and healthy snacking. For their tasting, they tried fruit pizza with blueberries, bananas, and mango. The 5th grade students learned about the small choices we can make many times throughout the day to build a healthy lifestyle. With this activity, they looked at recommended daily serving sizes for fruits and vegetables. For their tasting, they made a kale Caesar salad topped with cucumbers, pumpkin seeds and croutons.

In farm to school, the 2nd grade students learned about where food comes from and started a seed germination experiment with beans. Students recorded observations and made predictions about what will happen with their beans over the next few weeks. The 4th grade students learned about food webs and how energy flows in an ecosystem. All 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms enjoyed smoothies with their lesson.

February was a busy month at Courtade!

Farm to school lessons started off with the junior-kindergarteners learning about eating different colors of fruits and vegetables. They tasted a fruit and veggie snack of each color of the rainbow. Kindergarten learned about the plant life cycle and tried veggie roll-ups. The 2nd grade students learned about the parts of a seed and did a seed dissection activity. To accompany their seed lesson, they taste-tested edamame. The 3rd grade students learned about the 5 food groups and enjoyed veggie pita pockets. The 4th grade students did a food web activity and learned about the energy flow in an ecosystem. The 5th grade classes learned about different levels of food processing. The 4th and 5th grade classes enjoyed smoothies with their lessons.

In addition to lessons, Cougars tried black-eyed pea soup as their cafeteria taste test. More than half voted that they either liked or loved the soup.

Finally, we rounded our February at Bedtime Story Night. Featuring "The Runaway Garden" by Jeffrey Schatzer, students played a mystery vegetable vowel game by returning the runaway vowels to the correct vegetable. We also offered a tasting of black bean dip which received the upmost praise from Mr. Phillips who said, "This may be the best thing you've ever made." Click the photo for a link to the black bean dip recipe.

We kicked off our first ever farm to school lessons at Kingsley this month! For their first lesson, the 5th grade students received an introduction to nutrition lesson. They learned about the 5 characteristics of a healthful diet: variety, balance, moderation, adequacy, and nutrition density. They learned about the 5 food groups and compared different sources of nutrition recommendations. With this lesson, they tasted vegetables and hummus.

We look forward to growing this relationship with Kinglsey.

In honor of Black History Month, Northport taste-tested a black-eyed pea collard green soup. Wildcats were big fans of the soup with 75% of votes in the "loved it" category! See below for recipe.

During nutrition lessons, the K-3rd grade students learned about super snacks and foods that we should eat everyday versus foods that we should only eat sometimes. They made fruit pizzas with this lesson. The 4-5th grade students learned about the small choices we can make many times throughout the day to build a healthy lifestyle. With this activity, they looked at recommended daily serving sizes for fruits and vegetables. For their tasting, they made a kale Caesar salad topped with cucumbers, pumpkin seeds and croutons.

This month, we delivered our second half of the nutrition curriculum to 2-5th grade students. The 2/3rd grade students learned about healthy snacks and every-day foods versus sometimes foods, the importance of physical activity, and where food comes from. With these lessons, they tried fruit pizza, bean and corn salsa, and a smoothie. The 4/5th grade students learned about the small choices we can make many times throughout the day to build a healthy lifestyle, and why its important to eat a variety of different colored fruits and vegetables. With the final lessons, they made kale salad, rice-paper mango cucumber wraps, and smoothies.

The elementary and middle school students taste tested roasted sweet potatoes. The high school students taste tested