By Kristie Thorson, Communications Specialist
There is much more ‘being planted’ in this backyard then simple seeds and seedlings. These Minnesota children, along with their family child care provider, are also developing a perennial love of gardening, and with that, a desire to always eat their veggies!
Taking turns watering the garden is a favorite activity.
It’s all part of Think Small’s Early Sprouts program – a hands-on curriculum which teaches children about healthy eating and guides family child care providers through planting, gathering and serving nutritious foods in their programs.
“Early Sprouts is focused on giving providers experience and knowledge around adding a garden to their program,” said Rochelle Mateffy, an early childhood coach at Think Small.
Thanks to the generous support of the Cargill, Think Small is able to offer the Early Sprouts program to providers in the Twin Cities area at no cost. Family child care providers attend training classes and then they work with an Early Childhood Coach from Think Small to incorporate a garden into their family child care setting. This past planting season, twelve child care providers participated in the program. There were four from St. Paul, four from Minneapolis, one from Brooklyn Center and one from Brooklyn Park.
The children participate in the full garden experience from planting to harvesting.
“For the kids, the focus of this program is to give them the garden to table experience,” said Mateffy. “To teach them where their food comes from and also give them an opportunity to try these vegetables.”
Family child care provider, Wendy Prokosch, harvests green beans with one of the kids.
Family child care provider, Wendy Prokosch, owns and operates Lil’ Pro Family Child Care, a four-star Parent Aware rated program in Brooklyn Park.
“I have a lot of picky eaters and I was hoping Early Sprouts would give them more exposure and because of the ownership in the process that they’d actually experiment a little bit more,” said Prokosch. “And it worked! They are trying things that they normally would not even try.”
To see the Early Sprouts program in action, check out this video from Lil’ Pro Family Child Care.
