Farm to School Link Roundup

Sometimes you need a little Farm to School inspiration from around web! So take a break from your busy day and enjoy these interesting articles, videos or photos!

We are loving this blog post about cooking with kids from Liz Neumark of Great Performances. Our favorite tip: "get messy, make mistakes" While this is technically a line of Miss Frizzle's from the Magic School Bus, Liz goes on to remind us that "Cooking is following recipes but it is also about creativity. Try new combinations, new ingredients. The more you experiment, the better and more confident you will be."

David W. Orr from the Center for Ecoliteracy advises that "The classroom is the ecology of the surrounding community, not the confining four walls of the traditional school...[Where] they discover what Rachel Carson once called the 'sense of wonder'."

In this Boston Globe article,Tony Geraci (aka Cafeteria Man) describes his fight for healthier school food in Baltimore, MD and Memphis, TN. He emphasizes that "Food is one of the tools that ensures that kids are going to learn. Kids who are hungry do not learn."

Mark Bittman is Rethinking the word 'Foodie' in the New York Times.

Content provided by Karyn Novakowski, Project Director, Somerville Farm to School Project

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Mindful Eating: Part 1

In order to digest your food properly, your body must be in parasympathetic mode, or in a state of non-stress. Kindergartners know this. Well, they might not know the scientific term yet, but during lunch they participate in 6 minutes of silence; a period they call "Mindful Eating". When asked why they like mindful eating, the children replied, because "it’s quiet”, “I can enjoy my food better”, “I get peace and quiet”, and "it’s calmly”. Kindergartener teacher Ms. Scrima, and other Kennedy School teachers have been implementing mindfulness in the cafeteria and their classrooms since last year. They are proud to have a lunch period that looks and sounds quite different from the chaotic cafeteria rush other classes often experience. While the students sit silently at the lunch table checking in with their emotions, their digestive systems are also benefitting. Physiologically, only when our bodies are in rest mode can the brain trigger the release of digestive ...

Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP)

Students at Argenziano, East Somerville Community School and Winter Hill Community Innovation School tasted ripe, fresh picked strawberries, organic oranges, crunchy celery as well as many other fresh fruits and vegetables this school year as part of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP). All students at the three schools were offered a fresh fruit or vegetable as a midmorning snack Monday through Friday. Students gushed with enthusiasm about the program and voraciously consumed the fresh fruits and vegetables on a daily basis! We are excited to announce that the FFVP will be continued at Argenziano, ESCS and WHCIS during the 2014-2015 school year! The goals of the FFVP are to establish lifelong healthy eating habits and to fight childhood obesity since it promotes healthy eating habits among students by introducing a variety of produce on a regular basis, giving students an opportunity to try fruit...

Argenziano After-School Art Club Creates Mosaics for School Garden

In Ms. Diana Taremi’s Art Club it’s all about line, form, color and composition. More than a dozen middle school students started on several projects on Monday afternoons; creating art both for themselves and making projects to beautify the school. Their first assignment: Georgia O’Keefe-style painting on large canvases for the first floor hallway. The bright, lush flower canvasses are still works in progress. The students are also creating flower tile mosaics that will be set in cement and used as stepping stones in the school’s kitchen garden. Ms.Emily Bhargava, a mosaic artist from Somerville, donated her time and bags and boxes of materials; tiles from large to small to the art club for the project. On a recent afternoon, Ms. Bhargava spent an afternoon at Art Club teaching Ms. Taremi and the students how to assemble the mosaics. First the students painted large pictures of flowers. They covered these with plastic wrap to protect them; then layered mesh on...

Somerville Farm to School Project

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