Somerville Farm to School Project

Last fall was a very busy time for the Somerville Farm to School Project. We conducted sensory taste tests , apple tastings in our cafeterias , garlic planting days, special events like Food Day , and farm to school in class lessons. In fact, we were so busy that we are just finding time to post about some of our Fall 2014 activities! We hope the next few posts inspire you to think about warmer weather and working in the garden - spring is only 2 months away! In October and November of last year, first graders at the Argenziano School participated in a 6 week pilot farm to school curriculum. These lessons will be available to all first grade teachers in the Somerville school district as one of our farm to school curriculum kits. Working with the first grade teachers, we developed a science based curriculum that uses content literacy skills, cooking demonstrations and science experiments to teach students about plant parts and what they need to grow. These lessons were...

A few weeks ago in this post  we told you about a new holiday: FOOD LITERACY MONTH! We even gave a few suggestions for how to celebrate.  Well, we followed our own advice and did some of these local food activities. What we said: Read a book about food .   What we did: Not only did we read a book about food but we piloted an entire 5 week food and garden based science curriculum in the first grade classrooms at the Argenziano School! On the first day of the unit, students created a garden alphabet book, just like The Farmer's Alphabet and Eating the Alphabet . Content literacy, in action!   Students were assigned a letter of the alphabet and during a visit to the garden they drew pictures and wrote sentences using that letter as inspiration! The creativity was truly astounding. These "e"ggplant and "r"ed tomato pictures are just two of the amazing images these students created. We can't wait to show you "u"nderground r...

At the beginning of June, two adventurous teachers, Charlene O’Neill and Fran Carino, welcomed Groundwork Somerville staff, Sadie Richards and Andrea Tentner, into their 4 th grade science classrooms at Winter Hill Community School.    The classes test drove a 3 day pilot Farm to School Curriculum called “Growing Skills in the Garden”.   The lessons are meant to turn the garden into an exciting classroom for learning 4 th grade core curriculum skills; students used multiplication, fractions, and other math skills to solve real world math problems, read books and articles to find information, used and made maps, and more.   At the same time, students got out into the garden, learned about what it takes to grow food, where their food comes from, and why you might want to grow your own food. This curriculum was developed by Andrea Tentner while working at Groundwork Somerville, and was funded by the SPS Farm to School Project USDA Planning Grant. Andrea Tentner e...