Iowa Elementary

Iowa Elementary is proud to be one of the first school gardens in Aurora Public Schools! With the help of volunteer parents and kids, we built our Square Foot Garden on Monday, April 18, 2011, completing 9 3×3’ beds and one 4×4’ bed for the teachers. In 2012, we are expanding our growing space to 16 beds.

Our objective at Iowa is to show our students and parents how to garden without using a lot of time, money and space. That’s why we chose Square Foot Gardening (www.squarefootgardening.org). This spring, all of our 1st and 2nd grade students participated in planting seeds and then transplanting the seedlings. When the weather warms up, we will be using the seedlings in the garden.

We have an after-school Food Club for 16 kids, who learn all about how to taste, produce and grow food. They are very excited to get into the garden this spring!

We also have arranged chef visits with Chef Jorge of Johnson & Wales University, as part of the Chefs Move to Schools program. Chef Jorge demonstrated how to make healthy snacks to our entire school, and then has returned for several more special sessions attended by kids who have really been working hard and are thus rewarded by their teachers.