According to a blog posted on Change.org, there are a group of students in Iowa who are actually choosing healthy foods over junk food. "How do you get a kid to choose fresh veggies over a bag of grease-soaked French fries? Some might say a lobotomy, but in Iowa, there's a better answer. Iowa schools are taking the lead in the local-food movement, steering students into fields, greenhouses and even onto the farm. And guess what? In many of these programs, kids are eating what they grow."
What a great experiment for science or a project to promote further learning! The children are making healthy choices merely because they are vested in the growth of these crops. I am currently teaching a lesson on the food pyramid and healthy eating. The children are keeping track of what they eat and reporting back to the class a couple times this week. After the first report, we realized that the children were doing well in most categories, except for their vegetables. What a great way to get them more interested in what they are eating...have them grow their own! If there is space at your school, I think this would be something really exciting for the kids!
What a great way to get kids involved in the foods that they eat. So many times we as parents are shoving food in front of our kids (both healthy and bad foods) and hoping that our children will eat them. I think it is neat to allow children to grow their own food and see the healthy benefits from each food. Another fun idea for the food pyramid I did with my preschoolers were to divide them up in each of the food groups and make a poster of that food group. They each were able to cut out pictures of that food group from grocery ads and glue them onto their poster. They then presented their food group to the rest of the class. These young learners were surprised at some of the foods that were found in other food groups. It was a fun discussion that we had.
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