Garden

Color Me Healthy is a program developed to reach children ages four and five with fun, interactive learning opportunities on physical activity and healthy eating. It is designed to stimulate all of the senses of young children: touch, smell, sight, sound, and, of course, taste. Through the use of color, music, and exploration of the senses, Color Me Healthy teaches children that healthy food and physical activity are fun.

Curriculum Implementation Guidelines

Lessons can be taught as stand-alone lessons. Color Me Healthy is designed to be used in family daycare homes, Head Start classrooms, and childcare centers serving 4 and 5 year olds.

Cooking Matters for Chefs and Kids is an easy-to-use guide that helps chefs, nutrition educators, and food service professionals provide hands-on instruction that will help kids develop a love of cooking and the skills to make healthy food choices wherever they go. Within the guide you will find a variety of resources to help you engage kids, including tips and advice for planning fun activities, materials lists and activity instructions, appealing and interactive recipes for kids, and fun handouts that supplement the lessons of each activity.

Curriculum Implementation Guidelines

Lessons can be taught as stand-alone lessons and can be implemented by anyone with culinary training in any community.

Discover MyPlate is fun and inquiry-based nutrition education that fosters the development of healthy food choices and physically active lifestyles for children. Kindergarten teachers can meet education standards for Math, Science, English Language Arts, and Health using the 6 ready-to-go and interactive lessons. Children become food-smart as they practice counting, reading, writing, and more.

Curriculum Implementation Guidelines

Lessons are part of a series (not stand-alone lessons). Intended to be taught in 6 weeks or it can be taught over a course several months. Lesson may be extended based on supplemental activities from this curriculum.

Eat Smart, Live Strong is an intervention designed to improve fruit and vegetable consumption and physical activity among 60-74 year olds participating in or eligible for FNS nutrition assistance programs. The intervention can support the efforts of program providers and communities in delivering nutrition education to low-income older adults. Each session in Eat Smart, Live Strong focuses on changing behavior by guiding participants in learning and practicing new skills.

Curriculum Implementation Guidelines

Curriculum can be taught as a series or as stand-alone lessons.

The Eat Together, Eat Better lessons support nutrition, parent, and youth educators in teaching the importance of family meals. The lessons use a mix of interactive learning formats, including small-and large-group discussions, brainstorming, planning, and cooking activities. All of these activities create discussion, encourage problem solving, and develop skills to support family meals.

Curriculum Implementation Guidelines

Lessons can be taught as stand-alone lessons, but each session of the lesson must be taught (child, parent and family sessions).

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

Growing Healthy Habits is a gardening and nutrition education curriculum for elementary aged kids. This resource focuses on integrating nutrition into the classroom through gardening and scripted lessons that meet science, language arts, social studies, health, and math objectives. Growing Healthy Habits uses gardening as a tool for encouraging students to consume more fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and increase physical activity.

Curriculum Implementation Guidelines

Units can be taught in any order and each lesson within each unit can be taught in any order, but all units of the curriculum must be taught.                                                                                 

Health Through Literacy is a book set of five to six books, age-appropriate for each grade K–5. Each set includes books with nutrition or physical activity themes. Every book comes with a tip sheet to enhance the health messages in the book. The tip sheets help teachers discuss the books with their classes, incorporate physical activity into the reading of the book, provide ideas for a food tasting for students, and integrate health messages with other areas of the curriculum.

Curriculum Description

The 2016 revised Junior Master Gardener (JMG) Level 1 curriculum provides elementary teachers with the tools to teach the world of gardening with eight chapters of novel, hands-on and proven lessons. The curriculum also helps develops life skills, includes career exploration and provides opportunities for students to culminate the JMG experience with service-learning projects. As students complete areas of study, they can earn different recognition certifications including designation as Certified Junior Master Gardeners. Each chapter is divided into sections called teaching concepts. Then, there are multiple activities within each teaching concept.

Curriculum Implementation Guidelines

Lessons may be used individually as stand-alone lessons. The program can be implemented in schools, after-school programs, or other groups interested in young gardeners. Teaching multiple activities within a teaching concept is recommended.