Nutrition & Health Archives - Next Step Adventure

Growing Together

Sara Lockie on January 29, 2025

At our core, we believe in the power of growing together—whether that’s through planting seeds, cultivating relationships, or creating lasting change within our communities. That’s why we are so excited about our work with the Iowa Farm to School & Early Care Coalition, a collaborative effort that has been laying the groundwork for a healthier, more sustainable future for Iowa’s children.

The Iowa Farm to School & Early Care Coalition brings together schools, early care programs, farmers, government agencies, and community partners to foster connections between local food systems and young learners. The work we do helps to strengthen these partnerships, encouraging kids to explore where their food comes from, build healthy eating habits, and understand the importance of sustainable agriculture.

For many months, we have been working behind the scenes to coordinate a new statewide event in partnership with the coalition. On Wednesday, May 21, we will celebrate the first annual Iowa Kids Garden Day—an exciting event that will bring Iowa’s children, educators, and farmers together to celebrate the joy of gardening, fresh food, and learning.

Sites are asked to register to put their site on the map. Registration will open on March 5th, 2025 for schools, early care sites, and community organizations. At each site, coordinators will organize a variety of gardening activities for children and educators.

Iowa Kids Garden Day Every is an annual celebration occurring on the third Wednesday of May. Join us in bringing recognition to the people and programs providing these innovative, hands-on learning opportunities. Learn more about hosting a site in your community!

Teachers Going Green curriculum is here!

Martha McCormick on November 14, 2024

Last month Ashley M and I enjoyed a lunch meeting at the Trellis Cafe at the Des Moines Botanical Garden with Stephanie Harrington, Natural Resources Program Coordinator with ISU Extension, Polk County. Stephanie trains ISU Master Gardeners to work with school gardens. She does lots of other stuff as well.

She’s been looking for the Teachers Going Green curriculum for a couple years. And she’s had requests from teachers. The lessons haven’t been available for several years, but NOW THEY ARE!

And they are even better than they were before. Ashley updated them to a format similar to the lessons Sara developed for Waukee Schools a couple years ago. Those lessons empower teachers to use their extensive school gardens to teach the science curriculum.

Kids can learn science concepts experientially, while they’re getting outdoors, and learning about healthy food.

Since we developed the first Teachers Going Green lessons in 2009, the Iowa Core was changed to become the Iowa Academic Standards. Ashley combed through the standards and existing lessons to make sure they align.

She also reviewed and evaluated the lessons we’re now making available to you, for quality and clarity. We’re proud to say they come up to the standards you’ve come to expect from Next Step Adventure.

Teachers Going Green lessons for Kindergarten through 5th Grade are available for you to download HERE, free of charge. They are organized by the subject their Academic Standards align with–

21st Century Skills
English Language Arts (ELA)
Math
Science
Social Studies

We’re excited to offer this new resource to you for your classrooms and other programs. Please take the opportunity to share it with your colleagues and friends. And let us know how you’re using it, and how it works.

Celebrate the Farm to School Movement

Martha McCormick on October 10, 2024

Kids and dirt go together, well like dirt on kids. These two kiddos are collecting roly polies in our raised bed garden. June has worked these beds since before she was one, but now she’s six, and her interest in gardening is overshadowed by dance, first grade, and playing pretend. Still, yesterday, she picked a Jimmy Nardello pepper and ate it all up. When kids grow their own food, they’ll eat it!

This is our very October garden with compost cage, volunteer pumpkin and squash. We still have potatoes and carrots to harvest. But our garden is only my personal part of Next Step’s contribution to the Farm to School movement. And the movement has really picked up steam in Iowa over the last several years. Next Step developed Teachers Going Green beginning in 2009 to help teachers connect gardening with the Iowa Academic Standards.

Since then we’ve worked with local schools in Des Moines, Waukee and Iowa City to name a few. Our focus is on the education–We developed School Garden 101, also for Keep Iowa Beautiful. We plan to make the Teachers Going Green lessons available on our website in the near future, with some updates to reflect changes to the Education Standards.

Sara Lockie and the rest of the team train teachers and other youth professionals to work with kids in the garden. One important thing to remember is that it’s not about the plants. It’s about the kids.

But we’ve branched out from developing activities and lessons to coordinating Iowa State University’s Farm to School & Early Child Care coalition statewide. These efforts will expand the Farm to School movement far beyond the reach of Next Step Adventure alone. This year they’ve set goals to develop resources and better access to already existing curriculum.

So join us in celebrating Farm to School month by listening to this podcast from the National Center for Appropriate Technology, imagining how YOU can help connect with local food, and have fun doing it.

June and Hazel on the mulch pile at Sprouts Garden, Drake University — Eating Asparagus

Community Food Systems + Farm to School and Early Care Conference 2024

Dan Zimmerman on June 29, 2024

The 2024 Community Food Systems + Farm to School & Early Care Conference was held in June and included educational Farm tours the day before the conference.

The Johnson County Historical Poor Farm visit combined the history of the Historical Poor Farm with how the land is used today:

Community plots through Global Food Project
GROW: Johnson County to supply local food banks with fresh produce
Maintaining the land by removing invasive species and restoring native landscapes that help clean the water as it works its way to streams
Education on farming and the historical usage of the Historical Poor Farm

Camp Creek Farm in Kalona, IA showed us:

The hard work of starting up a farm in fields that had been unused recently
Existing infrastructure for long term micro green production
Creating compost to use in the fields from yard waste and farm waste
The variety of produce that consumers expect from Consumer Supported Agriculture and farmer’s markets

Camp Creek Farm is creating connections not only through farming and local food hub distribution but sharing greenhouse and storage space with other local farmers.

While the farm visits reminded me of the hard work it takes to grow the food we eat everyday, the conference opened my eyes to the barriers that prevent fresh, local food from being available to schools and early care sites everyday. Timing of when crops are ready in the fields and when children are in the classroom. Funding and sourcing enough food for an entire school or district. Budgets and time for the people needed to prepare the food. And kids’ tastes, what will they actually eat from year to year? I learned about established and well run programs in place or starting up that help fund fresh local food. The conference brought together educators, food service workers, chefs and local farmers to further understand the systems already in place, uncover challenges and create connections to keep pushing forward to get fresh, local food into school and early care sites that kids will eat. The kindness, connections, collaboration and education that I experienced at the conference has me energized to continue the adventure!

Farm to School Science Lessons

Sara Lockie on October 31, 2023

We are often asked, “How do we bring Farm to School teaching into our classrooms?” There are barriers. Time is short. Teachers are stretched. There is no “free time” in the day to add something extra.

Fortunately, Farm to School is not an extra. There are countless ways to integrate it into the existing framework. We know student learning increases when activities are hands-on, engaging, and meaningful. Farm to School activities do this.

Working with Waukee Community School District, we developed science lessons that meet the curriculum goals of the Iowa Academic Standards through Farm to School activities. Each grade level folder contains lessons and supplemental materials including:

Hands-on science lessons
Instructions for growing food in the classroom
Lessons for academic learning in the garden
Book lists
Cross-curricular connections
Taste-testing guidelines

All lessons are aligned to Next Generation Science Standards, as well as the Waukee School District’s progress report statements. Material lists, learning goals, actions steps, reflection questions, hand-outs, and seasonal recommendations are included.

We invite you to access the materials, try them out in your classroom, and let us know what you think. What worked well for you? What suggestions do you have?

Farm to School Lessons

We are proud of our work and thankful to partner with Waukee Schools, a Farm to School leader.