Local Food In Schools
All kinds of amazing work is going on in our local
schools to help bring more local food to our students!
Download/View
PDF's of the Resource Packets
Below
is an example of our Localvore Resource Packet that our
Localvore Project Schools Committee developed for our
local schools.
Fall 2008 Mad River Valley Eat Local Challenge
Teacher Resource Packet
Compiled by the MRV Localvore Project Schools Committee
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Dear educators,
As many of you may have heard, the word
locavore was elected as the New Oxford
American Dictionary’s word of the year in
2007.* “The word ‘locavore’ shows how
food-lovers can enjoy what they eat while
still appreciating the impact they have on
the environment,” said Ben Zimmer, editor
for American dictionaries at Oxford
University Press. “It’s significant in that
it brings together eating and ecology in a
new way.”
As enthusiasm for local eating mounts and
interest in the Farm to School effort grows,
we wanted to invite you and your students to
participate in the Mad River Valley Eat
Local Challenge scheduled for September 14th
– 20th. Past challenges have had a positive
effect on raising the awareness of where our
food is sourced, and encourages discovery of
the bounty that is available to us from our
own gardens, our local farmers and other
food producers within our midst. We
encourage you to bring these ideas and
activities into your classroom prior to the
official challenge and throughout the year
as well.
Attached you will find a Teacher’s Resource
Packet that offers a menu of simple ideas
that can bring the localvore challenge into
the classrooms. These are quick and simple
activities aimed at the Vermont standards
and organized by grade. We realize that the
beginning of the year is a very busy time
for you and your schools, and are hoping
that by offering these ideas al a carte, it
will be easy for you to promote and
celebrate the Localvore Challenge week with
students.
We gladly support the school's local eating
and gardening efforts and wish to help
strengthen its connection to the broader
community. Please let us know if there is
any other way we can help you in your
localvore endeavors during this school year.
Warm Regards,
Mad River Valley Localvores
*The Vermont region has chosen to spell the
term “localvore” |
Why Be a Localvore?
1.
Fewer resources (primarily fossil fuels) are expended
packaging and transporting local food.
2.
Local eating supports the local economy - more money
remains in our local community.
3.
Local whole food is healthier.
4.
Eating local connects you the community members that
grow our food.
5.
Local a food tastes better
6.
Eating local keeps farmers farming
What can students do to develop and
show their understanding?
PreK/K
-
Observe 5 vegetables that are available from local
farms, one for each day of the school week during
morning discussion. Identify the vegetable by name,
color, texture, and shape and inquire if students
have ever eaten this food and how (raw, cooked, in a
recipe). Describe the taste (sweet? Bitter? Good?
Bad?). Discuss where the vegetable came from, how
food grows, and what food grows in the place that we
live. You may talk about the farm where the food was
purchased and your experience there.
-
Make a rainbow lunch/snack of whole, colorful foods
from local farms and talk about the importance of
eating foods that look colorful, taste, look and
smell fresh. Refer to the localvore website
www.Vermontlocalvore.org for great food ideas. A
couple ideas:
-
Tomato (red)-basil (green)-cheese sandwich with
carrot sticks (orange) and an apple (red).
-
Tomato (red), corn (yellow) , cucumber (green)
salad with carrot sticks (orange) and
blueberries (blue/purple)
-
Cabbage (blue/purple), carrot (orange), scallion
(green) salad dressed with honey, oil (olive,
sesame, sunflower), and cashews.
-
Food/Garden
Journal
-
Create food
sculptures with seasonally available local
vegetables. Check out Fast Food, a picture book by
Saxton Freymann full of humor, whimsy, and photos of
vegetable sculptures.
-
Vegetable prints with local root crops (potatoes,
carrots, beets). Create a banner that celebrates the
Local Food Challenge week in the Mad River Valley.
Through this art project, students can learn
vegetable names, colors, textures and sizes.
http://www.kinderart.com/printmaking/fruit.shtml
-
Identify the origin of local vegetables by looking
at a Valley map.
-
Make butter (physical changes of fat molecules)
-
Make yogurt (bacterial organism action)
-
Sprouting
-
Make a seed sprout salad in 3 – 5 days. Sprout
the seeds of alfalfa, radishes, lentils, and/or
peas. Seed sprout mixes are available for
purchase at Sweet Pea Natural Foods in
Waitsfield and the Hunger Mountain Coop in
Montpelier. Link this activity to discussions
about plant cycles and how we can “grow” our own
nutrition.
-
cityfarmer.org/sprout86.html
-
Feed/study composting earthworms. Dig up and observe
worms from the school garden or schoolyard and talk
about the connection between worms and the food we
eat. Worms breakdown food wastes through the process
of decomposition to create rich compost for our
farms that in turn feed us! Worms increase soil
fertility, aeration, and rates of decomposition.
1st-3rd Grade:
See
Pre/K and:
-
Map your favorite snack--where do the ingredients
come from? Where is it processed/packaged? How far
does it have to travel to get to you?
-
create a visual representation of the distances
involved (to scale in classroom, on paper, etc.)
-
take your favorite snack/food and come up with
an alternative recipe using local ingredients
-
Tour the cafeteria/food prep area and learn what
parts of your school food are local and what aren't
-
Harvest and prepare a snack with local ingrediets
-
Visit a local farm and help harvest root crops for
the cafeteria
-
Little Hands Farm in Warren is open and willing
to host school field trips
-
Sally and Jeremy at Threegoodbeans@yahoo.com,
496-3263
-
Hold a "taste-off" with local vs. non-local produce
-
List as many local farmers and what they
grow/produce as they can. Then compare to the
Localvore Foodshed map (to be published shortly).
-
List as many local foods as they can--just what can
we grow in VT? Compare with published list. Any
surprises?
-
Compare the diet of a person 100 years ago with
their own diet--what is different, what is the same?
-
Read Little house on the Prairie- what a historical
local food economy looked like
-
Tend the school garden--harvest, plant cover crops,
get ready for winter
-
What would they grow if they were a farmer and why?
Create a collage of their "acreage" showing their
products
-
Food/farm/garden songs
-
Explore the MRV Localvore website,
www.Vermontlocalvore.org
4th-6th
Grade:
1st-3rd grade
and,
-
Hold a mock "farmer's market" vs. "buy it all mart"
with different roles etc.
-
Labeling local foods at the local grocery stores
-
Watch "true cost of food" and discuss (6th
grade)
Open Your Day Questions for Morning
Circle:
Do
you think it is important to know where your food comes
from?
Have
you ever visited a local farm? What was your experience
like?
What
will you eat for lunch today? What do you think kids ate
for lunch 100 years ago?
What
foods do Vermont farmers and orchardists grow?
Do
you know any farmers? What do they grow?
What
is your favorite vegetable? Does it grow in Vermont?
Have
you ever grown a garden before? What did you grow? Share
a special garden memory.
Discussion or T/F activity around a local food fact (see
“Did you Know?” below)
Resources
Teacher Guides/Curriculum:
-
www.Vermontlocalvore.org
-
The Mad River Valley Localvore Project’s website
chock full of resources and links.
-
”The True Cost of Food”
http://www.truecostoffood.org
-
A 15minute animated short emphasizing the hidden
costs in food produced by conventional methods, and
some of the reasons to buy and eat locally grown
food.
-
“A Guide for Connecting Farms to Schools &
Communities” published by VTFEED.org
-
“A Guide for Using Local Foods in Schools” published
by VTFEED.org
-
“Food For Thought: Challenging Big Food/Media’s
Monopoly Over Our Media Culture” http://acmecoalition.org/files/ACME_food_for_thought.pdf
Agriculture in the Classroom
-
http://www.agclassroom.org/
-
http://www.agclassroom.org/teacher/tours.htm (short
movies related to Ag)
-
A grassroots program coordinated by the United
States Department of Agriculture. Its goal is to
help students gain a greater awareness of the role
of agriculture in the economy and society, so that
they may become citizens who support wise
agricultural policies.
Vermont Agriculture in the Classroom
Massachusetts Agriculture in the Classroom
-
http://www.aginclassroom.org/
-
A website to foster an awareness and learning in all
areas related to the food and agriculture industries
and the economic and social importance of
agriculture to the state, nation and the world.
Children’s Books (We highly encourage you to tap into
your school’s librarian as well):
-
Little House on the Prairie,
Laura Ingalls Wilder, 3-6
-
The Man and the Ox Cart,
Donald Hall, PreK-3
-
Linnea’s Windowsill Garden,
Christina Bjork, 1-3
-
Flowers, Fruits, and Seeds,
Jerome Wexler, PreK-K
-
In My Garden (a counting book), Ward
Schumaker, PreK-3
-
Lily’s Garden, Deboarh Kogan Ray, K-3
-
Pickin’ Peas, Margaret Mead McDonald and Pat
Cummings, PreK-1
-
One Bean, Anne Rockwell and Megan Halsey,
Prek-3
-
The Tiny Seed, Eric Carle, K-3
-
The Ugly Vegetables, Lin Grace, K-3
-
Westlandia, Paul Fleischman and Kevin Hawkes,
K-3
-
Seedfolks,
Paul Fleischman, 4-12
-
Planting a Rainbow,
Lois Ehlert, PreK-3
-
Our Apple Tree,
Görel Kristiana Näslund and Kristina Digman
Did you Know?
·
One pound of prewashed lettuce contains 80 calories
of food energy. Growing, chilling, washing,
packaging, and transporting that box of organic
salad to a plate on the east coast takes more than
4,600 calories of fossil fuel energy, or 57 calories
of fossil fuel energy for every calorie of food.
source: Ominvores Dilemma by Michael
Pollan
·
The food industry burns nearly a fifth of all the
petroleum consumed in the US (about as much as
automoblies do). And, only a fifth of the total
energy used to feed us is consumed on the farm; the
rest is spent processing and moving food around.
source: Ominvores Dilemma by Michael
Pollan
·
The average 400 calorie breakfast consumes 2800
calories of fossil fuel energy.
·
The average meal uses 17 times more petroleum
products then an entirely local meal.
·
On average, food items travel 1500 miles before
arriving at your table.
·
3% of all farms produce 62% of all agricultural
production (talk about putting all of your eggs in
one basket!).
·
Almost 96% of the commercial vegetable varieties
that existed in 1903 are now extinct.
·
91 cents of each dollar spent in a traditional food
market goes to suppliers, processors, middlemen, and
marketers and only 9 cents goes to the farmer while
farm markets enable farmers to keep 80 to 90 cents
of every dollar.
·
3000 acres of US farmland is lost to development
(suburban sprawl) every day.
·
During the 1950's the average American household
spent 30% of their income on food. Today we now
spend 15% of our income on food.
·
Vermont lost nearly 90 percent of its remaining
farmland between the 1950's and today.
·
Even in the early 1980s, Vermont was importing 70%
to 80% of its carrots and apples.
·
The food system accounts for almost 16 percent of
total U.S. energy consumption, which includes
production, processing and distribution (statistic
from June 2001).
·
It is estimated that 6 to 12 cents of every dollar
spent on food consumed in the home represents
transportation costs.
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