Food for Thought

Today Chris, the Children's Garden Coordinator at SCLT, and I romped around with kids from Bright Horizons and Luv 4 All Daycare Centers. We made sure to reiterate the parts of the plant to them (root, stem, leaf, fruit, flower), and what plants need to grow (light, water, soil).

After taking a walk around the garden, we checked on the spot where everyone in the group planted cilantro. I had not expected to see any cilantro shooting out of the ground in just one week, but to the kids' excitement, there were little tiny cilantro seedlings popping up.

We then had some arts and crafts time, and the kids were able to draw imaginary plants, with one condition: that their imaginary plants have all of the necessary plant parts. It was really interesting seeing what the kids drew- Car plants, money trees, and ipod plants... It makes me wonder how the future will evolve according to the priorities of this generation..

We have also incorporated a bunch of activities that involve eating into the lesson plans- it is important for the kids to see that healthy food is delicious, and that they can someday grow food that they can eat and enjoy as well.

We picked tomatoes and gathered a bit of cilantro (not the seedlings, but some that was fully grown) and made a fruit salsa.


Chris's Fruit Salad Salsa


1 peach
20 cherry tomatoes
1 kiwi
8 cherries (take out the pits)
a handful of cilantro
3 scallions
1 lime

All the ingredients were diced up and the lime was squeezed over the salsa for some added flavor.

Some of the kids were shy to try the salsa, but most of them enjoyed this homegrown tomato dip. It would be better if all of the ingredients were able to be grown locally... Rich told us that we could use some of the recently harvested pears at the farm for the other groups that come!