kids 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

We’re Gardeners!

Martha McCormick on August 29, 2022

That’s what my four-year-old granddaughter says as we plant fall crops. I always tell folks who work with kids in gardens, it’s not about the plants. It’s about the kids.

Clear Boundaries. No Limits

Martha McCormick on February 17, 2015

Art is unique in requiring that hands and mind be in the same place. Distraction and anxiety are at the forefront of challenges for Des Moines Art Center Outreach students. Art class provides opportunities for quiet, focus and mindfulness.

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!

Reflect on Service

Martha McCormick on September 22, 2011

I love service learning. It’s fun to help kids help people, in preschools, retirement communities, parks and gardens. Service learning is a respected way to get kids involved in their own educations.

But it’s not just about doing projects that help communities. For service learning to be valuable to young people as well as to the people they work with, we have to involve them in every step of every project–investigation, planning, action, reflection, demonstration and celebration.

After Global Youth Service Day last spring, Jessica Krough, Melissa Simmermaker of the Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service, and I talked about innovative ways to reflect on the state-wide day of service. We decided to experiment with Internet based radio to bring kids together from different GYSD projects around the state. About eight kids joined me on my show, “We’re Entrepreneurs–we can help.” Three of my Earth Heroes, and two students from the Hoover High School STARS program came to the studio. Two students from Lamoni Middle School and their facilitator joined us by Skype.

The Earth Heroes talked about the ongoing project they’re doing for Global Youth Service Day. Jessica visited the garden, and helped them read the Governor’s Proclamation. They were still clearing the garden, building their dragon, and planting vegetables.

As Kyla, Terrance, I work with the Earth Heroes at the Des Moines Botanical Center, we talk about

What happened?
So what?–How did you feel? What did you learn?
Now what?–What’s next? How can you use this experience in the future?

Here is some of their wisdom–

“When I’m special, I work really hard.”
“I didn’t know broccoli grew on a plant.”
“Digging is fun!”

The Earth Heroes walk down the hill from Boys and Girls Club at Carver Community School to the Botanical Center, and we form a circle. The kids know the FIRST thing we do is the “Name Wave.” The kids lead the Wave, starting with everyone yelling out their name as loud as they can. Then come “compliments and appreciations,” a chance for everyone to say thank you, and talk about what we like.

It’s September, and the 2nd through 5th graders are harvesting squash, pumpkins, watermelon, beans, tomatoes, okra, onions, potatoes, peppers and sunflower seeds to take home. Any gardener knows fall is time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t, what got done, and what didn’t. What was lost? Where did the summer go?

So, they’re taking photos in the gardens, and next week we’ll create a map of each of the 20 ten-foot X 10-foot raised beds, making notes about what grew, crops that worked well together, and what the Heroes learned from experiments with okra, mulching, and fall planting.

Service learning is a powerful way for young people to find relevance in education, dream about the future, and change the world.

Find Refuge

Martha McCormick on October 18, 2009

I just applied to make my yard a certified wildlife habitat. I figured I might as well, since the deer have plucked my rosebuds one by one this summer and fall. Really, it’s a small step toward taking better care of the outdoors.

I started the process about three years ago when a group of friends and I removed an extensive pool, deck and pond structure and opened the space to nature. The huge Pin Oak that anchors the space has flourished since then, putting out new growth. I’ve added a perennial border of native plants and shrubs, allowed redbuds, oaks and maples to grow where they will. I’ve composted for a while, raised a bit of food and most recently installed a rain garden with the help of my friend Anne, the Iowa Garden Coach.

It’s really turned the back yard into a refuge, not just for the critters, but for me and my friends. I hope you’ll take some actions to make the world a little greener; here are some suggestions–

Take this “Outdoor Bill of Rights” Survey to help the Iowa Department of Natural Resources develop their agenda for getting children and youth opportunities to spend time outdoors.
Parents–Check out “Be Out There” at the National Wildlife Federation’s Web site, especially the resources for taking kids outside including Why kids need to play outside
The Next Step team was involved in creating this online resource for exploring Iowa–99 Parks Family Fun Guide
See what it would take to create a wildlife refuge at your school.

Tag: kids