Capacity - Nutrition Education and Healthy Meals

Discover which fruits and vegetables are sweetest, crunchiest, and juiciest through a series of investigations and fun experiences connecting the school garden to the classroom, school cafeteria, and home. This eleven-lesson curriculum for 3rd and 4th grades includes bulletin board materials, veggie dice, fruit and vegetable flash cards, and ten issues of Garden Detective News for parents/caregivers.   

Curriculum Implementation Guidelines

Lessons are part of a series and taught in order. Curriculum flexibility based on garden type and size of garden.

First comes shopping, then comes putting food away — but where? You may be surprised to learn the best places to store your groceries! Here's a helpful guide from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

This handout focuses on the importance of washing hands and surfaces often.

This handout describes how to refrigerate food promptly and properly to reduce the risk of foodborne illness.

This handout reports the safe minimum internal temperatures for cooking food.

This handout series provides basic cooking information to use with families.

This guide is intended to serve as a practical tool for implementing feeding best practices for optimal nutrition in early care and education settings. Those who work in child care centers, schools, community organizations or primary health care practices play an important part in supporting children’s development of healthy habits, both by providing nutritious food and by teaching children how to make healthy food choices. Children who learn these habits when they’re young are more likely to continue making healthy choices in adulthood. By sharing information with families and early care and education providers, you can work with them as partners to support healthy children.

Without leaving the classroom, students participate in a variety of purposeful movement designed to get the wiggles out and refocus the classroom — all in five minutes or less. GoNoodle involves movement activities that develop memory and fluency in math, spelling, and vocabulary.

This colorful handout developed by the Indian Health Service shows balanced meals with reasonable portion sizes. This tool shows three easy steps to knowing what and how much to eat. The front features a dinner plate. The back shows youth breakfast, lunch, and optional dinner plates. Based on the USDA MyPlate and designed for Native audiences.