October 19, 2006 Issue                                       

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©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Education Section 102

Farm to (Snack) Table at OMC Parish School

Our Mother of Consolation Parish School is a veritable cornucopia of locally grown produce these days. A handful of cherry tomatoes (yesterday’s treat) await nibbling on the principal’s desk, a bowl of fresh pears tempts staff and visitors in the school office, and paper plates of sliced red peppers with cucumber salsa sit at each kindergartener’s place, ready for snack time. After a prayer of blessing, many of Ms.Gallagher’s 5-and-six--year old charges dig in enthusiastically. Others are a little more cautious. “I don’t like red peppers,” complains one little girl. And while children will always have individual preferences, OMC’s new principal, Bruce Hagy, has invited the Food Trust’s Kindergarten Initiative into the school this year to ensure that students are educated about healthy food choices from a tender age.

“We want to reinforce in the school the healthy choices that we hope our parents are making at home,” says Hagy. “The Food Trust’s Kindergarten Initiative is a wonderful program because they tie it all together: a curriculum that integrates nutrition into our lessons, fresh snacks from local farms, and support for families in serving wholesome food.” Ms. Gallagher agrees, “ the Food Trust does an excellent job of supporting my efforts to work messages about good nutrition into the curriculum. The Food Trust sent a representative to meet our parents at Back-to-School Night and will send educators out to offer further support as the year goes on.”

The kindergarteners will learn that food issues can be part of a science lesson when they study the life cycle of plants; in math they may count the number of pieces as they divide and share apples. Storytime will certainly include books about farm life and an art lesson on color will also emphasize the value of eating “a rainbow on a plate.” Throughout the year, the children will examine how food moves from the farm to our tables both through classroom study and by visiting several local farms.

The field trips to the farm sound especially exciting to five-year-old Riley Mulligan. “I can’t wait to go apple picking,” she exclaims. Mary Mulligan, her mother, notes that while Riley has often visited local farms, these field trips will be special in the emphasis they will place on the farm-to-table connection. “I know that after this year when we shop at the supermarket together, she’ll have a very good sense of which things in the produce aisle are grown nearby,” she says. A major goal of the Kindergarten Initiative is to teach young children that locally grown food has a higher nutritional value – and tastes better than produce shipped in from California. The ingredients for the snacks that the children receive several times a week are all seasonal and from local farms. Mulligan also looks forward to receiving the recipes for popular snacks such as Apple Compote and Confetti Cole Slaw that will be sent home in Food Trust newsletters.

Principal Hagy believes that the lessons being taught and learned in the kindergarten will reverberate throughout the school. The school offers a hot-lunch program three days a week and hot lunch coordinator Dina Pimentel says, “We do talk about the choices we offer our children through the hot lunch program and the need to offer salads and fruit on the menus. We’re always trying to balance their desire for chicken nuggets with our concerns about nutrition.” In the future, as kindergarteners who have been through the Food Trust’s program move up into the higher grades it should be even easier to foster a culture of healthy eating habits. Hagy, an avid gardener, also hopes to install a small greenhouse for the school one day where students could plant their own tomatoes and peppers — giving even deeper meaning to the Food Trust’s favorite phrase, “locally grown.”