youth Archives - Next Step Adventure

Iowa Kids Garden Day

Sara Lockie on June 2, 2025

Across the state nearly 35,000 kids celebrated the first annual Iowa Kids Garden Day, hosted by 100+ locations! At Next Step Adventure, we have been organizing and coordinating this work for almost two years, and it was gratifying to see it all come together.

My favorite story was when I visited a celebration at Irving Elementary in Waterloo. A boy planted a row of bean seeds and was asked to water them using a small pail of water. The boy was quite hesitant exclaiming, “I have no experience with this! I’ve never watered anything in real life, just in games on my phone!” A minute later, he successfully poured water over the seeds.

Iowa Kids Garden Day celebrates children and educators growing and eating delicious food. This annual statewide celebration is coordinated by the Iowa Farm to School & Early Care Coalition. Join us next year on Wednesday, May 20, 2026 by visiting https://www.iowafarmtoschoolearlycare.org/iowa-kids-garden-day

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

Storytelling with Drake Students

Ashley Kirvin on January 19, 2023

Martha and I bundled up on a very snowy morning in early January, and drove to the Hotel Pattee in Perry Iowa. Lopso, the resident dog greeted us warmly at the back door. His name complements the fact that he had three legs, making him lopsided. He became a caring presence to us and the students. Lopso wandered in and out of our session, and paused only for his hotdog lunch.

Carol Spaulding-Kruse had asked us to facilitate three hours of yoga with Drake students during a J-Term class, focusing on the intersection of yoga and writing. We focused our session on Hanuman, the monkey-faced god of the Hindu myths. Even though Hanuman’s story is centuries old, its lessons are still relevant today. The Ramayana is one of India’s most popular myths. In it Ram asks Hanuman to complete several difficult and challenging tasks, that he believes are impossible. Each and every time, Hanuman tells himself that he cannot accomplish such enormous tasks, and yet, he always does. He’s been telling himself a story that simply wasn’t true.

Lopso the three-legged dog at Hotel Pattee — Sweet Lopso approved our message, however he stood firm that he could not skip his hotdog lunch.

As we told Hanuman’s story, we asked the students to consider the stories they tell themselves. Martha and I urged them to note which stories are true, and which are not. Sometimes in our minds, we tell ourselves stories like, “I’m not funny” or, “I’m too shy.” Because the stories aren’t always true, necessary, or helpful, they limit our capacity to experience our full humanity. We told the Drake students some stories we’ve told ourselves, and how they’ve not always been helpful, true, or necessary.

Yoga asks us to occupy space, to relish in the full capacity of our humanity. Hanuman reminds us we can do hard–even impossible–things, even when we’ve been telling ourselves we can’t.

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.

Tell Me Something Good

Martha McCormick on October 22, 2014

I’ve worked with Des Moines kids since 1980. Sometimes it’s hard to be optimistic when the challenges seem to multiply each year. But this article and the statistics it uses to illustrate its points provides some tangible examples of progress.

This morning I taught art to half a dozen boys who attend a group home for various problems they’ve had at home. We start each week with an art journal. Today more than one boy started their journals with, “I hate my life.”

I gradually introduced different media, first crayons. I asked the boys to experiment with using different pressure, and mixing different colors. Then I passed out watercolors and had them paint over their crayon drawings and see what happened.

They really got excited when I put their watercolor paper under the faucet and told them to go experiment with putting watercolor on it. They tried brushing, splattering, dripping. Their attempts produced a variety of results, but the product isn’t the point with these young men.

The point is building self confidence and a sense of mastery. Using simple tools and media gives these boys a chance to succeed, to produce something they’re proud of, whether it’s for the spring show or to take home to decorate their rooms.

Last week we built structures per Andy Goldsworthy. First we watched the movie Rivers and Tides as well as a satire my cousin created. The idea of just creating a piece of art was a little too abstract, so I asked them to build structures. They learned collaboration, creativity, perseverance and problem solving through the activity.

They climbed trees, got dirty and wet, and came up with several different approaches. Today when we walked back to the woods, their shelters were still there. And they crawled into them.

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!

Clean and Green Your Second Grade Class

Martha McCormick on October 24, 2010

With this Clean and Green Second Grade Program Guide, the first phase of the Keep Iowa Beautiful service learning, litter-free schools, environmental education, character building program is officially ready for piloting! With help from the Waste Commission of Scott County, Character Counts! in Iowa, Davenport Public Schools, we are ready to send teachers and kids out to the playground and community to find ways to make them better while they are learning the essential concepts of the Common Core Second Grade State Standards for Mathematics, Life Science, Social Studies, Literacy and 21st Century Skills. The Second Grade Matrix of 20 activities is based on the Core and the Four Keys of Character Education-safe, challenging community, self study, other study and public performance-to assure that we help teachers incorporate best practice in their classrooms.

The guide is flexible; it has engaging activities for the classroom, afterschool and summer programs. Each of the activities can stand on its own, but it will be more powerful if used as a comprehensive unit. During this pilot year, we’ll collect feedback from as many of you as possible, and change the program guide in response to that feedback. Watch this Web Site for online surveys, send feedback to Martha McCormick, or add your comments to this post itself.

Clean and Green Your Kindergarten Class

Martha McCormick on October 11, 2010

I am excited to present the Clean and Green Kindergarten Program Guide. Thanks to Keep Iowa Beautiful, the Waste Commission of Scott County and Character Counts! in Iowa, we are ready to pilot it in Davenport Public Schools. The guide is flexible; it has engaging activities for the classroom, afterschool and summer programs.

Each of the activities can stand on its own, but it is more powerful if used as a comprehensive unit. During this pilot year, we’ll collect feedback from as many people as possible, and change the program guide in response to your feedback. Watch this Web Site for online surveys, send feedback to Martha McCormick, or add your comments to this post itself.

The Clean and Green Kindergarten Matrix of 20 activities is based on the Common Core Standards for Mathematics, Life Science, Social Studies, Literacy and 21st Century Skills. We used the Four Keys of Character Education–safe, challenging community, self study, other study and public performance–as the other axis of the matrix to assure that we help teachers incorporate best practice in their classrooms.

Please check out the Clean and Green Kindergarten Program Guide. Download and try the lesson plans. Here are some of our favorites–

Collaboration with Nature and Math
Cricket Thermometer
Composting with Worms
Neighborhood Maps
Three-Letter Word Forming
Haikus and Wordles
Thinker’s Scavenger Hunt
Flat Stanley Recycled with Pattern

Keep Iowa Beautiful

Martha McCormick on July 5, 2010

I’m working with Keep Iowa Beautiful and the Waste Commission of Scott County to provide educators with a program guide and resources for teaching…

Service learning
Litter free schools
Character
Environmental education

…all organized around the Iowa Core and Common Core Standards. I’m using this post to run things by the Steering Committee, get reactions and involve them in pulling it together. I’ll make changes to the resources and continually update the committee as the program comes together.

Help us stay on task by posting comments to this page. Here are some of the resources we used to develop the program guide.

Tag: youth