Farm and Garden Educator Resources

2010 Eco-Farm Bus Tour Resource Roundup
This year's School Garden Bus Tour rolled straight into a stormy day of downpours and tornado warnings. After our first rainy stop at Carmel Middle School we continued on to mostly clear skies at Westlake Elementary, the Life Lab Garden Classroom and UCSC Farm, and ended at the Santa Cruz Green Careers High School.
During the tour we discussed many resources that are useful for on farm and garden-based education.

Here is a summary with links to the resources:

• The Crop Rotation Game is a part of our Investigating Ag Field Trip where students are introduced to basic concepts of organic farming
• Print a copy of the Investigating Ag field trip journal (4mb PDF)
• Our field trip training manual has been developed to prepare our college intern field trip guides to lead 1st-5th graders on explorations of our farm
• Here's a list and slideshow of many of the Life Lab Garden Classroom's educational elements
• The Creating and Sustaining Your School Garden workshop resources are great for those starting a school garden or training others that are new to school gardening. They include videos, handouts, trainer outlines, a ppt presentation, and the downloadable book Gardens for Learning
• The California Department of Education offers some great publications related to garden-enhanced nutrtion education
• Kids Cook Farm Fresh Curriculum free download
• Nutrition to Grow On free download
• Fruit and Vegetable Cards
• Request a school garden starter packet which includes Life Lab's Getting Started (you can also download Getting Started here)
• www.healthyschoolenvironment.org lists all the resources from the free Fresh Fruits and Vegetables a Centerpiece of a Healthy School Environment Training. Sign up for a spring training. View the CDE's Management Bulletin regarding using school garden grown produce.
• The School Garden Promoter website is a new resource we have created that summarizes the work completed at the Fall 2009 School Garden Sustainability Summit and much more for school garden professionals
• The California School Garden Network http://www.csgn.org/ is full of resources including a statewide event calendar - please post your events there
• Subscribe to Life Lab's Garden-Based Learning Video Blog we recently posted 10 simple "Back Pocket" activities that will come in handy for any garden-based educator. We also have some great demonstrations of effective outdoor instruction

We plan to share many more resources via this blog. You might want to consider subscribing via email in the left hand column.