Since day one, Kids’ Food Basket (KFB), has been dedicated to providing consistent access to healthy food to children and families across West Michigan.
When a child has the opportunity to eat nutritious food on a daily basis, it fuels the energy they need to reach their full potential in school and in life.
It is the consistency that makes all the difference.
Over the last few years, Kids’ Food Basket has adopted the philosophy of consistency to its LEARN commitment and continues to partner with schools across West Michigan to expose children to consistent nutritional education. From these lessons, students are filled with a wealth of knowledge on:
- Agriculture: A foundational understanding of where vegetables and fruits are grown, how they are grown and tips guiding students to start a garden of their own.
- STEAM: Hands-on learning experience that keeps them engaged in science whether they are in the classroom or online.
- Healthy Lifestyle Habits: Providing a basic understanding on the impact vegetables and fruits have on their mental and physical abilities has proven to create a lasting impression as they move through life.
Over the course of six weeks this winter, Kids’ Food Basket partnered with Orchard View Elementary in Muskegon County to provide an in-person curriculum. This curriculum focused on educating second-grade students on plants and the importance of eating vegetables and fruits.
Members of the KFB Learn Team joined classrooms and taught lessons inspired by the virtual Ground Up Learning Lab, which features activities focused on community advocacy, phytonutrients and the transformation a seed goes through to become a vegetable or fruit. The students were further engaged and excited by the surprise of having a taste test.
Taste tests provide students with the opportunity to try a variety of food. This experience is vital to our lessons, as we expose students to foods they may have never tried or seen before. Our Learn Team has come to thoroughly enjoy the surprise faces when they introduce foods such as purple green beans or raspberries to students. More importantly, students enjoy the burst of flavor that accompanies the loud crunch as they bite into a green bean or pepper that comes from the Kids’ Food Basket 10-acre farm.
For this specific lesson, Orchard View students were given raspberries as part of the “Eat the Rainbow” lesson. Students delightedly described the raspberries as squishy, yet tasty!
In addition to the raspberries, Orchard View students also tried lettuce. Prior to this series of lessons, the students planted lettuce in their mobile garden. Ms. Christina, a Kids’ Food Basket Education Professional, picked the heads of lettuce, thoroughly rinsed and encouraged the students to try what they have grown.
One student said, “wow, we get to eat the lettuce that was just growing?!’, as he took a big bite of the class’s finished product.
By partnering with Orchard View schools through a series of weeks, the consistency of showing up helped keep the students eager to learn more.
“One of my students, who struggles with poor attendance, told his mom that he couldn’t miss school on Wednesdays because that is the day Ms. Christina from Kids’ Food Basket comes and teaches us about plants!” said one of the second-grade teachers at Orchard View.
Knowledge is power. When children learn about the origins of healthy food, how it’s grown and the barriers that some people face to access it, they are empowered to take small actions that ultimately make a big, life-long impact.
