Healthy kids
July 1, 2010 at 4:43 pm 1 comment
Promoting healthful behavior in our youth leads to a stronger educational experience (and a more fulfilling life!). If you have been involved with a program aimed at this at your school, please share your ideas. If you’d like to get a program started at your school, please post a question!
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1.
Heidi Carter | August 11, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Thanks to Michelle Obama, childhood obesity and school nutrition are on the national radar in a big way. In DPS, we areworking to increase access to healthy food for our students and to foster healthy behavior choices around food. As a school board member, I hope we will take a comprehensive approach and focus on school meals, healthy fundraisers, nutrition standards for all food consumed on school campuses, K-12 nutrition education, and experiential learning opportunities like school gardens. This last area may be critical to help reacquaint our children with real food (rather than edible food-like substances), where it comes from and what it does in our bodies.
There are several schools with active school gardens, such as EK Powe, Lakewood, and Watts. The school garden at Watts is thriving under the coordination of parent, Alice Bumgarner, and the support of school leadership. This summer, food harvested from the garden is being given to families in need as a sort of community supported agriculture effort. The garden also serves as a learning lab during this summer and during the school year.
I would love for more of our schools to have gardens, and there is an excellent website with gardening “tools” to help folks get started: http://agriculture.sc.gov/content.aspx?ContentID=789
There are also community supporters of school gardens with much expertise who can help schools create a garden. Jeff Ensminger, of Natural Environmental and Ecological Management (NEEM), is helping develop garden programs at YE Smith, CC Spaulding, and other schools and community locations.
School gardens are a great way to involve the community in the life of the school, encourage physical activity through caring for the garden, provide sensory learning experiences for students, encourage healthy eating, and more.