TEACHERS TAKE NOTE

Healthy Foods from Healthy Soils:
A Hands-On Resource for Teachers

Elizabeth Patten and Kathy Lyons

Illustrated by Helen Stevens

Paperback, $19.95, ISBN 978-0-88448-242-0

8.5 x 11, 192 pages, illustrated

Education / Science; Grades K-6

Teachers, whether they live in a city or a farming community, will find this book a wonderful tool to help "ground" children as they learn about their power to make healthier food choices. Educators will also enjoy the inclusion of strategies to introduce a puppet to classrooms. Patten and Lyons have had such success using their puppet Annelida, the Healthy Foods From Healthy Soils "spokesworm," that they have integrated her into the book.

Healthy Foods From Healthy Soils will help inspire classroom conversations about:

• What "locally grown" means to students
• Eating and exercise habits
• Recycling opportunities
• Soil quality and worm composting
• Gardening techniques
• Farming heritage
• The connections between food and culture
• Puppetry and creative arts

Activities:

• Create placemats that illustrate a lunch scene in another region or culture.
• Have students survey their parents, neighbors or relatives about their lunch breaks as children or as adults at work.
• Encourage students to look for demographic patterns in lunch traditions. What are the similarities and differences between rural and urban populations? Or between Northerners and Southerners? Or between countries?
• Research how was lunch eaten 100 or 200 years ago compared with today.
• Do students have enough time to eat lunch? If not, is it a school or system-wide issue? What might change the lunch timetable? If they seek more time for lunch, have students draft a letter to their school principal/superintendent/school board.