When the school bell rings, there is a group of twelve students at Bugg Elementary who don’t rush out of the building towards home. Instead, they head straight to the garden. These are the Food Shuttle Sprout Scouts, in the fourth week of their afterschool club.
Each week Sprout Scouts spend two hours after school preparing a nutritious snack, learning what plants need to grow, and tending to the school garden.
But they are learning much more than that.
The lessons incorporate life skills, team building, patience, common core curriculum and of course, healthy eating.
This week students split into three teams, working together to prepare spiralized sweet potato noodles and homemade lemon tea, made with fresh lemon balm.
“Don’t Yuck, My Yum” is a lesson preached in Sprout Scouts but luckily this week, there were only “Yum’s!” The lemon tea was a crowd favorite – so much so that one student even initiated a “tea” toast for all their hard work.
After the snack was devoured, the lessons and work weren’t over. It was time to get their hands a little dirty. This week’s lesson was on what plants needed to grow – the basics of water, air, sun and soil. Each student took turns helping each other water the garden and then labeling the garden with popsicle sticks for each different variety of fruit and vegetable planted. Then, students got involved in every gardeners favorite task – weeding!
The lesson ended with a chance for the scouts to reflect as they journaled with the task of drawing or writing a poem about the plants.
Alenise, one of the Sprout Scouts, summed it up best in her poem.
““Plants need soil,
soil needs water.
We definitely need you,
so clap your hands and share.”
Here at the Food Shuttle, we are lucky to share the love of gardening and healthy eating. If you’d like to get involved, email Ayn Corrigan, Urban Agriculture Programs Manager.
Sprout Scouts at Bugg Elementary School is made possible by funding from Chiesi USA and support from Logan’s Trading Company.