GRUBbing in Preschool Gardens

Our goal is to help educate our community on all the wonderful food we have growing around us and what to do with it. We do our best to teach about were the food comes from and how we can grow our own. We prefer to teach with hands-on activities, hopefully in a garden and with real food. We work with preschool children, school age children and adults.

Until recently, we were working with eleven preschools and the Boys and Girls Club. We had received funding to start and help maintain a garden at each site. We visited each site once a week and worked with the children and staff in the garden. Activities included planting, weeding, harvesting, learning about soil, bugs, and the season, understanding the difference between food grown in their garden and food grown elsewhere and anything else the children wanted to learn about.

Through the program we have seen children learn they can grow their own food, even year-round in Chico. We have seen children try new foods straight from the garden and really enjoy it. Next time you are in a winter garden, pick a stalk of spinach and eat it right there. It is sweet, has a crunch, and most likely will be completely eaten by the child. We have found that children do not want the processed food, they want the whole, fresh food, in it's natural form.

Currently we are looking for funding to continue these programs.

We have started gardening and cooking classes at Catalyst, Domestic Violence Services. There is a small garden located on site and we are preparing meals twice a month that focus on local, whole foods. We keep the recipes simple and wholesome. We use local ingredients when possible and supplement with items from their garden. Our goal is to show how easy, affordable, and delicious it can be to cook with local, whole foods.