Healthy Beginnings
Healthy Beginnings for Active, Healthy Lifestyles Program
Washington Montessori School 6th grade Middle School students and parent volunteers are building an organic edible garden at WMS. With a grant of $1000 from Litchfield Hills Food Systems and generous donations from a few WMS families and John Scheeper's Kitchen Garden Seeds in Bantam, the first eight raised beds were built on Friday, May 21st. WMS students at all levels will be involved in building, planting, and caring for the garden.
Different classrooms started seeds in the greenhouse and some of these seedlings will be going to Judea Garden in Washington Depot. Parent volunteers and students will also be helping maintain the school garden over the summer. The harvest from the garden will be shared with Judea Garden and WMS students and faculty will enjoy healthy snack and lunch options. One of the central tenets of the Montessori philosophy is the connection with the natural world of the outdoors. When students have the opportunity to experience the outdoors with structure and purpose they learn how to use their hands in everyday endeavors focused on the earth.
Gardening nurtures each student's appreciation and understanding of the natural world and builds ecologically responsible citizens by involving them in the seasonal cycles of planting, harvesting, and sharing the food grown in an organic garden. For more information, please visit www.washingtonmontessori.org.
Elise Brady-Moe
Director of Communications
Washington Montessori School
860-868-0551
The linking of programs that serve as catalysts for building a sustainable food system, including farm-fresh local foods, is vital to creating and institutionalizing a comprehensive community outreach program that will not only provide opportunities for sustaining a farm-to-market food system, but will embed health and wellness initiatives. An important element of such a comprehensive plan is an education component.
This grant request proposes developing and implementing a cutting edge pre-K curricular program, Healthy Beginnings, which will build on the successful lead experience of Feeding the Minds (see attachment). Litchfield Hills Food Systems, whose mission is to connect Connecticut-grown local food to a sustainable farm-to-school food system, proposes to partner with the Litchfield Public Schools and EDUCATION CONNECTION to develop this program. The added benefit of partnering with EDUCATION CONNECTION, a regional education service center, is that they (a) manage the Litchfield County Head Start Program, (b) have previous experience with Healthy Children, Healthy Minds, a program for students in grades 7-8 whose goals are to improve core academic skills while improving physical fitness and the understanding of nutrition, and (c) they are a foodservice contractor for public schools in western CT. With EDUCATION CONNECTION's proven experience and expertise in providing educational enrichment for children, this program will create a strong partnership that will result in Litchfield being the focal point for this lead experience.
The principal focus of activities will be the expanded pre-K program hosted by Litchfield's Center School. Other pre-school children in the greater Litchfield area and, by extension, their families will be involved in this program. An additional component of the program will be interdistrict activities with children from Torrington Public Schools' pre-K program.
The goals of the Healthy Beginnings program are to: 1) build healthy eating literacy; 2) educate families about good nutrition habits; and, 3) encourage people to participate in the Litchfield-area farmer's market to discover the fresh, locally-grown options available to them. Healthy Beginnings will make the important connections between local producer and local consumer and between good food choices and good health.
The need for such a program is supported by data collected from 347 local pre-school children, ages 2-5. This data indicated that 17% of this population has a body mass index (BMI) of 95% or greater, classifying them as overweight. Another 17.3% fall in the at-risk category, between 85% and 94%. The national rate for obesity among this age group is 10.4%. These statistics reveal a severe need in the greater Litchfield community to promote healthy lifestyle choices involving nutrition and physical activity.
This intensive curriculum will be based on experiential learning activities. These activities include read-aloud segments that emphasize good nutrition and healthy eating habits, hands-on “growing” projects to take home, healthy cooking demonstrations, age appropriate music focused on good food and where it comes from, classroom visits from local farmers and, a field trip to a farm. Students will engage in seed-to-plant germination activities. Families will receive simple, kid-friendly healthy recipes, a Fit Together Resource Guide covering the greater Litchfield area, and a $5 coupon to be used at a local farmer's market. Learning segments will build on a common theme: “We are what we eat.” We recognize that parents are their children's first teachers and will include families in all aspects of our program.
The program will be implemented between May and November, a timeframe that aligns with availability of local farm-fresh food.
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