The garden goals for 2012 include expanding the garden capacity and related programming. Programming will include linking gardening with nutrition lessons for students and families establishing a mini produce market provide cooking classes and family workshops. The garden grant will teach families and students about the value of fresh produce and build skills in gardening and preparing fresh produce in new recipes. It will also make fresh affordable locally grown produce available.
Our goal is that the produce and educational activities will be resources for students and the community to make healthy choices. Our school is situated in a locale that lacks fresh healthy food and we hope that the students will gain an appreciation and understanding of the garden as a resource for themselves and their families. To further this concept we will support our students by participating in Youth Grown Detroit, a program that brings youth to local farmers markets with their produce.
Youth 4 Health Bookworms wants to expand to the Yerington Elementary School where the Y4H Instructor will meet with 3 & 4 grade classes and use curriculum to assist the students in beginning the first school garden in Yerington. Supplies include materials needed to support a new garden: individual mini- greenhouses for each student to start from seed and then transfer into the new garden space. Youth will learn about organic gardening sustainable agriculture and donate produce to food shelter
The Yates Elementary Garden is used by 500 students to learn about plants, study life cycles, investigate ecosystem interactions and to grow delicious, healthy food.
Funding would enable us to focus on the next step of our gardening program; creating an outside garden space that will be used by students as part of a collaborative project between Yampah Mountain High School and students from Escuela del Mar y Sol in Chihuahua Mexico. We will work with Arjuna Ibarra to use gardening as a tool for creating ties with a school in Mexico while also teaching our students gardening skills and connecting them with a local food landscape.
To create a garden that would be planted and maintained by all the students at the school has been a long term goal.Several concepts learned through videos and paper and pencil will now be replaced by their ability to dig in the soil plant harvest crops and observe.This garden would really increase their learning in the areas of earth science.They will also learn about teamwork. This grant will allow us to build the planting beds obtain the soil plants and some basic gardening supplies.
Our goal is to educate students in sustainable agriculture and enable them to take the message home. This grant will enable us to expand our indoor hydroponics system and help us start an outdoor community garden. We have set aside space for both and we need money to purchase supplies. The dedicated space will enable a much larger number of students to experience growing their own food and to perform their own agricultural experiments.
The goal of the gardens project at our two high schools is to make students more aware of their environment and the impact food and environment has on our lives. Students have planned and organized the sites through use of science and math. The McHenry County Farm Bureau and Illinois Extension tested soil samples and assisted us the planning of which plants to grow and which trees and plants would be good companion plantings to discourage harmful pests and encourage beneficial insects in area.
Since our students spend much of their time locked behind bars in tiny cells or enclosed classrooms we are addressing student needs by creating an outdoor classroom haven with an organic garden outdoor eco-space farm to fork meal plan and cross-curricular academic program. The garden will teach critical life skills in a hands-on outdoor setting linking lessons about food health culture environment responsibility and interdependence. And fortunately we are not starting from scratch; t
We would like to expand to include holistic health and wellness inquiry units (Healthy Me Got Dirt and Got Veggies Project Learning Tree). We would also like to expand with a storage shed permanent garden beds and aquaponics. We will continue to partner with community organizations and businesses and we will continue to integrate reading writing and math curriculum with hands-on projects.
