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Farm to Child

April 2025

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Why Farm to Child

At least 5 reasons:

Combat unhealthy childhood weight gain
Effective health intervention
Cost saving
Competing for attention
Understanding food systems and where food comes from

There are many benefits to Farm to Child. Here are at least 5 reasons.

1. Recognized pattern now in US that children are gaining weight at younger ages than ever before. And they are not growing out of that weight like they used to but are instead carrying that excess weight into adolescence and then adulthood.

�2. There are several studies showing that health interventions focused on 2-7 year olds are more effective than those targeting older children and the effects of those interventions are lasting. Preferences for food and physical activity level are set between ages 2-3. It is easier to change habits among 0-5 years than change habits among high schoolers let alone adults.

�3. There are several economic health studies that have shown that intervening early means saving lots of money at the individual, state and even national level.

�4. We are competing for children and families attention against a host of industries marketing low nutrient-density foods to children. Best to get in early.

�5. Helping students understand food systems and where their food comes from is important at an early age. It can connect them to the work and human side of our food system. This is also an excellent way to connect with and celebrate local farmers and producers.

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What is Farm to Child

Farm to early care and education or Farm to ECE, a nationally recognized program created to help enhance children's educational experiences in early care settings, is based on three core elements: Education, Gardening, and Local Food.

�Farm to ECE takes place in all types of ECE settings: preschools, child care centers, family child care homes, Head Start/Early Head Start, Family, Friend and Neighbor Care, as well as, in K - 12 school districts.

�The wonderful thing about farm to ECE is the flexibility of the programming. Involvement can be within 1, 2, or 3 of the components. If you are not able to take on local procurement, you could start discussing agriculture and nutrition with library books, songs, or toolkits.

�Maybe you want to take just one item on your menu each month and switch it to a local item. Whether you purchase that item direct from a farmer or take the extra time to find the Colorado Proud label at the grocery store, you have participated in farm to ECE.

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Nutrition Education�

Field trips

Visits from farmers, chefs, etc.

Posters of farmer bios in classrooms/eating areas

Celebrate local food

Storytelling

Experiential learning

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Nutrition Education�

Curricula

USDA Grow it, Try it, Like it!
Harvest for Healthy Kids
Pint Size Produce
SNAP-Ed Culture of Wellness in Preschools

Harvest of the Month

Here are some free recommended curricula and resources.

�USDA Grow it, Try it, Like it!, Harvest for Healthy Kids, or Pint Sized Produce are wonderful examples of curricula that can be downloaded at no cost and implemented with minimal cost to your program.

�Grow it, Try It, Like it!, which recently released a version for Home Care Providers, contains nutrition education aligned with the CACFP and focuses on specific fruits and vegetables. Using a supplemental curriculum like Harvest for Healthy Kids will allow you to implement a variety of materials that may align better with the seasonality of Colorado produce.

�SNAP-Ed Culture of Wellness in Preschools is available to eligible sites. It includes hands on nutrition education with tie-ins to USDA MyPlate and adult oriented classes for caregivers, as well as policy, systems, and environmental changes that focus on gardening and farm to child.

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Taste Testing

Timing

Different cooking methods

Exploration

Group tasting

Food description words

NEUTRAL environment

Taste tests are intended to encourage adventurous eaters that grow to love the taste and texture of healthy, seasonal vegetables, and fruits. They are an introduction to foods the children may see again at lunch time, growing in the garden, or on grocery store shelves so students can build familiarity and meaningful experiences with those foods. ��Here are a few quick tips for a successful taste test:�1. After snack time, when tables have been cleared and cleaned with all children seated together begin your taste test.

2. Ask the children to be scientists. �3. Compare three types of vegetables and fruits. Asking: Have you seen this color before? Has anyone tasted something purple before? Do you think this grows on a tree or in the ground? Will it have seeds?�4. For items that are very different on the outside than the inside, for example a pineapple, let the children feel and smell the outside, before exposing the inside. �5. Encourage them to make their best guess as to what they are about to discover. �6. Now it’s time to taste!

�Have the children try the food together, share thought, and describe what they are tasting. Then ask if they would try it again.

�Remember that just showing the food to the child and having it on their plate counts as exposure and will lead to eventual progress. It can take up to 15 exposures before a child will feel comfortable with a new food.

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Gardens

Different types of gardens

Support

Families
Community and clubs
Colorado State University Extension
Schools

Whether you have no outside space and will focus on all indoor planting activities, such as planting bean seeds in bags or cups, or a small indoor herb garden, or you have a huge playground and can accommodate a large raised bed garden there is a way to bring gardening to your program. Which type of garden you choose is largely dependent on space and funding.

�It’s important to engage staff, family, and community members early in the planning process for a garden. There are a variety of supports to starting and maintaining a garden. ��If you have active clubs such as Scouts of America, 4-H, a wood shop at the high school, or a caring church community, we encourage you to reach out to these groups. Assistance with building the beds, donation for materials, and more could be available. The Colorado Farm to Child website is also a great resources for information. ��

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Exploring Gardens with Young Children

Research shows that gardening supports children’s physical, social, and emotional development.

Physical development and motor skills: children develop both gross and fine motor skills through meaningful gardening tasks

Social and emotional development: children work cooperatively with others to complete large garden tasks

Approaches to play and learning: through exploring and asking questions, children build interest and curiosity about the natural world

Communication, language, and literacy: new vocabulary is developed through unique and meaningful real world experiences

Gardens can be used as an extension of the classroom. Gardening provides the perfect space to allow experiential learning to become the norm. Experiential learning contributes to appropriate cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development. These experiences invite curiosity and excitement about the world around them.

�It also enables children to pursue their own areas of interest and to work through problems as they arise in real life situations. Gardens are also a safe place to take risks.��Gardening and outdoor interactions with nature provide a place for play and inquiry.

�Until a child has truly witnessed a tiny seed grow into a large plant and puts off tiny green fruit that slowly turns red and recognizable a tomato, they will not understand the value of that beautiful tomato on their plate.

�Gardens by nature include mud, dirt, bugs, and even the occasional critter or snake. All of the best planning and development in the world will not mitigate these items nor should they. Allowing children to explore and work collaboratively to navigate the garden will lead to learning that cannot be found anywhere else. Can the children take off their shoes and feel the mud squish between their toes?

�Social relationships can also be developed in the garden. Working with peers to plant, water, and harvest require teamwork, negotiations, and information sharing.

�One last note is what we the parent/caregiver/educators learn from the children during these experiences. Sometimes children will tell us something about themselves or the world that we may not have noticed in the traditional environment. Children make amazing observations about the world around them as they are still working to figure it all out and find their place.

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Exploring Gardens with Young Children

The garden provides a real world context for exploring math, science, social studies, and art ideas.

Math: mathematics concepts of number, patterns, shape, and measurement have essential meaning in the natural world.

Science: children build knowledge related to the living things they share their environment with.

Creative development: the natural work provides inspiration for exploring colors and visual art.

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Local Procurement

What is it?

Local Procurement means buying local. For some, local can be very specific to within 10-50 miles of your center or home. For others, it could the whole state of Colorado. For those who share a border with Utah, Nebraska, Wyoming, or New Mexico, maybe it's more regional.�

However you define local it means your are buying from a farmer, producer, rancher, or even fishery. Buying local produce, meats, dairy, eggs, and grains supports your local economy, jobs, and kids.

�Providing local food to children also provides increased access to food in your community. You have the opportunity to bring fresh local produce and other products to families. Through local procurement, you have the opportunity to buy direct from farmers and producers at great prices. When purchasing whole cases you can pass that savings on to your families.�

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Colorado Farm to ECE

The Farm to Child website contains many resources, curricula, guides, and connections for local food sourcing, gardening, and nutrition/agriculture education. These resources can serve as a foundation for Farm to ECE/Child programs.

Colorado Farm to Child is supported by a Collaborative that brings together over 150 supporters to share their voices and experiences as we develop resources, mini grant opportunities, guides, and implementation of the Farm to Child Roadmap. �

The Farm to Child Collaborative envisions a state where fresh produce and other nutritious foods from local farms are an essential component of strong and just local and regional food systems.

�To assist providers along their journey, the Collaborative created many resources such as the Colorado Harvest of the Month which provides an easy-to-follow framework and ready-to-use materials that showcase locally grown foods each month through beautifully designed newsletters available in English, Spanish, and Arabic. �

Resources also include the Quick Bite Culinary Training videos on PDIS, Eating, Growing, Learning Colorado Farm to Child Guide, and the Colorado Roadmap Audience-specific guides for local food purchasing.

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Farm to ECE Alignment

Colorado Shines Quality Rating Improvement System (QRIS)
Colorado Early Learning and Development Guidelines (ELDGs)
Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS)
Child and Adult Care Food Program
Licensing Regulations
National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)
Early Head Start
Head Start
Universal Preschool

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Alignment of Farm to Child with Early Care Standards and Programs
Sample Standards, Indicators, and Goals		Example Activity
Colorado Early Learning Development Guidelines	Cognitive Development 4.1: the developing understanding of number and quantity.	Children taste a variety of apples, vote on their favorite, and record the results.
Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale – 3^rd Edition (ECERS-3)	Language and Literacy 5.1: Helping children expand vocabulary.	Teachers are heard talking to the children about the garden and what the children are doing. The teacher names the items growing and describes the tools by explaining their use.
Quality Rating Improvement System	Child Health Promotion	Children taste vegetables from the garden.
USDA Child and Adult Care Food Program	Best Practice: Incorporating seasonal and locally produced foods into meals.	Each week highlight one item from Colorado’s Harvest of the Month on the menu.
National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)	10.D. – Healthy, Nutrition, and Safety Policies and Procedures: The program has written policies to promote wellness and safeguard the health and safety of children and adults. Procedures are in place that address the providing of adequate nutrition for children and adults.	Wellness policy that includes language about how the school promotes fresh, local food in meals and classroom activities.
	2.G.07 Curriculum Content Area for Cognitive Development: Science	Scientific concepts could include life cycles of organisms, structure and property of matter, weather, seasons, time, light, and shadow.
Head Start	Subdomain: Gross Motor Goal IT-PMP 4. Child demonstrates effective and efficient use of large muscles to explore the environment.	Have children help carry gardening tools into the garden, navigating different surfaces and moving around garden beds.

Now let’s examine some examples of this alignment.

In the first example, we are looking at the Colorado Early Learning Development Guidelines. Children develop understanding of number and quantity. The activity is a taste test that ends with a vote, allowing children to count number of hands in the air, make tally marks on a sheet of paper, and then showcase the results - maybe a graph would be great here! ��This is a Farm to child activity.

�Second example also includes tasting vegetables. This is in alignment with QRIS, for Child Health Promotion and this activity could take place in the garden or the classroom with fresh produce. ��Let’s look at a final policy example. This one is for the NAEYC, Health Nutrition and Safety Policies and Procedures: The program has written policies to promote wellness and safeguard the health and safety of children and adults. Evidence for this could be a wellness policy discussing how the school promotes fresh, local food in meals and classroom activities. This example shows how you can get “credit” for your farm to child work.

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Farm to School (F2S)

Enriches the connection communities have with fresh, healthy food and local food producers by changing food purchasing and education practices at schools

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Farm to School Program

Administered by the USDA Food and Nutrition Services
Promote and support the use of local foods in Child Nutrition Programs

National School Lunch Program
Summer Food Service Program
Child and Adult Care Food Program

Leads to healthy kids
Positive downstream effects on communities

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Farm to School Impact

Farm to School has been gaining momentum across Colorado and the country. The USDA regularly tracks F2S activity and administers the Farm to School Census every four years. The most recent Farm to School Census, administered in 2023, found that throughout Colorado a total of:

124 school food authorities (SFA) reported participating in farm to school activities in SY 2022-23
68% of SFAs serving local foods in their schools
22% of SFAs with edible gardens
64% of SFAs doing F2S procurement activities
59% of SFAs doing F2S education activities

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Resources and References

Eating, Growing Learning: Colorado Farm to Child Guide: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WDRvPPjJA0huN2w2csU279PeKmPhQhwp/view
Colorado Local Food Program Guidebook: https://guidebook.nourishcolorado.org
Nourish Colorado Farm to School Local Food Purchasing: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XqpkbIbZma-PS5OIe89x0n2OOYCW5J0_/view
USDA The Patrick Leahy Farm to School Program https://www.fns.usda.gov/f2s/farm-to-school
Growing Minds Preschool Lesson Plans: https://growing-minds.org/preschool-lesson-plans/�

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Thank you

Made possible with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention