fun Archives - Next Step Adventure

Iowa Kids Garden Day

Sara Lockie on March 10, 2025

We’ve been working on this for months, and we finally get to share it with everyone – Iowa Kids Garden Day registration is open here!

Wednesday, May 21st, 2025 (or anytime in May!)

Save the date for Wednesday, May 21, 2025, and celebrate Iowa Kids Garden Day! School and ECEs are encouraged to host an event, joining with others across the state to celebrate children and educators growing and eating delicious food.

Date: Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Location: Schools, early care centers, and community organizations across Iowa
Activity: Planting or caring for a garden

Questions? Email [email protected]

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

Meet Someone

Martha McCormick on January 6, 2014

Sometimes it’s hard to find a new activity to help break the ice at a class or meeting. I’m always looking for new ideas. I found this one that I put together a long time ago (I’m cleaning my office!) and thought I’d share it.

It’s certainly not unique, but it might add a twist on things you’ve done before. And you can use the name tags to divide the group into nine smaller groups.

I developed this version for a meeting of facilitators and girls from Chrysalis After School groups, so the symbols I used are related to things we wanted for the girls and their groups–unity, understanding, wisdom, voice, strength. This Name Tag Game has everything you need to print off to play the game.

Each person’s name tag is printed with one of the pictures on the Name Tag Game Board. Have them write their names on a name tag as they come into the room. Then they are to find a person with a matching name tag picture for each square on the Game Board, as well as one thing about that person they didn’t know before. When they have all nine squares on their Game Board initialed, they have completed the game. Prizes are a nice incentive. It’s great to have something for everyone as they finish. Maybe it’s their ticket to snack or a pin that represents the group.

Remember Evelyn Davis?

Martha McCormick on February 20, 2013

I started working in Des Moines in 1980 when I was fresh out of graduate school. Iowa State University Extension hired two urban 4-H professionals to fill one position. The Polk County Extension Director’s reaction was not warm. “There’s no such thing as a free puppy” was his frequent response to our requests.

Extension negotiated with Evelyn Davis for free rent in exchange for free programming with the families, kids and staff at Tiny Tots, and we moved into an old classroom on the second floor of the old Nash Irving Middle School, then the home of Evelyn Davis’ Tiny Tots Center. It was a cold day in February 1980, and Horticulture Specialist Mohammad Khan took us on a breakneck tour through the “hood” in his tiny Nissan. Things have improved a lot since then. Hofmaster and I learned our way around the city by being lost a good deal of the time.

Evelyn Davis’ work continues through the Evelyn K. Davis Center for Working Families. The Center houses Gateway to College and other programs for individuals and families that struggle to make ends meet, much less get ahead. Ms. Davis was a force of nature that impacted me personally as well as professionally.

I felt my baby’s first kick in the hallway at Tiny Tots waiting out a tornado warning. When I brought Kate to the center a month or so after she was born, Ms. Davis took my crying child from Charlene Owens’ arms and she quieted and settled against that warm caring heart immediately.

Ms. Davis helped our nutrition education programs connect with other organizations in the community, and let us hone our teaching skills on her staff and clients. Our joint efforts brought additional ISU staff to the community to work with parenting skills, nutrition education and advise on home improvement. We turned those three classrooms into a real inner city Extension Office that impacted the community for four years.

Now the site of the old Tiny Tots Center is Evelyn Davis Park where we held our first 4-H Portable Challenge Training. We brought Sam Tower in from Washington State University to spend a week with 12 professionals from Extension, Des Moines Schools and Employee and Family Resources. Those five days began the adventure movement in the Des Moines area. That fall we created a physical education class for kids who were at risk of dropping out of high school because they were failing PE. Soon we added afterschool and summer programs, and finally corporate training and work with adult students.

Ten years later we started the Adventure Learning Center with Living History Farms and Polk County Conservation, still the premier course in Iowa. And that’s where I learned to climb poles. But that’s another story!

Divide Your Group

Martha McCormick on August 9, 2009

As I facilitate experiential education or group discussions, I like to divide any group that is larger than seven people into smaller groups. This makes it easier for quieter people to be heard. If I’m with a group for more than an hour or so, I mix the groups up so everyone gets to know each other better. I’ve experimented with some different ways to divide large groups lately; here are some of the methods I use.

At customer service training I am doing for the Iowa Community Action Association, I’ve been using the Chinese Zodiac. I made up nametags with the pictures of the twelve Zodiac animals–

Brody Girls at HerStory 2007

Rat
Ox
Tiger
Rabbit
Dragon
Snake
Horse
Lamb
Monkey
Rooster
Dog
Pig

Then I made pages with the corresponding pictures, descriptions and years of birth for each sign. I put these on the tables, automatically dividing the group as they arrive. I have small groups form by combining different signs. Here is a Web site that tells you which signs go together best; you could base another grouping on those recommendations.

Here are some other quick ideas for forming small groups randomly–

Have the girls line up by one of these methods; then divide the line into the size or number of groups you want– (Shoe size, Height, Birthday)
Divide by eye color, kinds of shoes or shirt color
Divide by month of birth or season of birth–
(Winter = December, January, February, Spring = March, April, May, Summer = June, July, August, Fall = September, October, November)
Play the game Mingle Mingle, ending with the number you want in your small groups.

Michelle Cummings of Training Wheels has published a book–Playing With a Full Deck–that has lots of ideas for activities for groups that only use card games. Download Dividing a Group for a taste.

Play

Martha McCormick on July 1, 2009

Play is a most important element of creativity. People know me for bringing toys to meetings to engage our playful side as we work. Building play into collaboration builds trust, encourages communication and open interaction. Taking time out to play when I’m struggling with a project will loosen the gears and help me focus again. A walk, playing with Bitsy or weeding the garden can loosen my mind enough to find the way to move on.

As I listened to Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett interviewing Stuart Brown, a physician and director of the National Institute for Play, I thought of times I’ve spent playing with friends. Jill and I creating Jill and Martha’s Relay. Eric with two yellow domes behind his ears to help hear me yelling across the field. Creating the cow milking lesson with Jody.

This Speaking of Faith webpage and podcast may open up some new ideas for you; it did for me. AND it justified my sometimes circuitous routes to accomplishing tasks. They’re talking about how important play is to the development of animals and children and how we need to keep play in our lives for the duration. I recently was in a meeting and Allen Cooper of the National Wildlife Federation used this slide show in his talk; it still sends shivers down my spine.

As I listened to Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett interviewing Stuart Brown, a physician and director of the National Institute for Play, I thought of times I’ve spent playing with friends. Jill and I creating Jill and Martha’s Relay. Eric with two yellow domes behind his ears. The creation of the cow milking lesson with Jody.

This webpage and podcast may open up some new ideas for you; it did for me. AND it justified my sometimes circuitous routes to accomplishing tasks. They’re talking about how important play is to the development of animals and children and how we need to keep play in our lives for the duration.

Play is a most important element of creativity. People know me for bringing toys to meetings to engage our playful side as we work. I like to build play into collaboration because it builds trust, communication and open interaction. If I’m struggling with a project, taking time out to play will loosen the gears and help me focus again.

A walk, playing with the cats, or weeding the garden can loosen my mind enough to find the answers. I was talking with my neighbor the other day about a practice she uses that encourages all of us to find answers within ourselves. I hope this site helps you find some of those answers.

Tag: fun