Spring Kickoff
Teachers, spring is here and kids are planting their gardens now. Our goal is to get every student out into their school garden this year. We are here for you, ready to assist with flexible support. As always, we provide both gardening and instructional support for teachers and parents. Sign in above to get started. Don’t forget to schedule your garden visits for the spring season.
Questions? Contact Us
Join our Virtual Dinner Party
In celebration of our 15th anniversary and Earth Day 2021, we will be hosting a Virtual Dinner Party on April 22, 2021 featuring Marta Loachamin, Boulder County Commissioner, and other key leaders in health, education and environment. Plus, we’ll have dinner specials and exciting door prizes including a Farm Dinner for Four at Black Cat Farm ($450 value) and a $200 gift certificate to Boulder County Farmers Market.
Register for the event here.
Summer Camp
Parents, Garden To Table is hosting our first ever summer camp! These week long sessions, for children ages 6-9, will take place at school gardens in Boulder County. Registration is open now through BVSD Lifelong Learning. Learn more about summer camp here. Scholarships are available for students living or attending school in Lafayette through Nature Kids. Call 720.601.4964 to inquire about a scholarship.
Register for Garden Camp here.
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Our Commitment to this Community
School gardens provide many benefits for health, education and the environment. After a year of being cooped up, students need more opportunities to step away from their computers, get outside, move their bodies, interact and connect with nature, and participate in hands-on, experiential learning. Because of this, our goal is to get every child out into their school garden this growing season. We are committed to supporting our teachers with flexibility and creativity.
In 2020, we used school gardens to grow and donate 8,500 pounds of fresh produce to local food banks. We created 7 new video lessons, in English and Spanish, to assist teachers and parents with home learning. We published our Home Garden Resource Guide to support home gardeners in growing the garden of their dreams. We created a How-to Guide to Container Gardening, available in Spanish and English.
In 2021, we will be updating our curriculum to meet new academic standards, translating all new materials into Spanish, offering professional development for teachers who want to teach outdoors, maintaining 20 abundant school gardens and installing bilingual signage so that everyone knows they are welcome in their school garden.
It is our goal to get every child out into their school garden this year and to support their teachers in the process. Can you help? Join our Every Child in the Garden campaign with a donation today.
Environmental Education for a Changing World
To build resilience in a changing world, we need to educate our youth about the environment and teach them skills that will help them to live well and heal the earth. Garden to Table believes that garden education can do exactly this. Students with an understanding of ecological processes and an ethic of environmental stewardship will be able to solve problems and create solutions for a more regenerative world. Our school garden program provides the content and the context for impactful learning.
Health Education for At-Risk Youth
Children who grow their own food are more likely to eat it and to express a preference for fruits and vegetables. At a time in history when rates of new diagnosed cases of diabetes are on the rise for kids and teens, especially among minority groups, it is imperative that we teach all students the importance of healthy eating and active living. Equally important are the skills needed to grow their own food and the opportunity to develop a taste for fresh fruit and vegetables. Garden education has the ability to do exactly this and our standards-based curriculum is designed to engage children in this type of learning.
Teacher Support to meet District Goals
We are the only school garden support organization serving Boulder County. As academic standards change, teachers are asked to implement new teaching strategies and curriculum in their classrooms. Garden to Table provides a standards-based, hands-on curriculum for teachers to use in their school gardens. Our curriculum is designed to address the Next Generation Science Standards and the 2020 Colorado Academic Standards, and is being translated into Spanish to allow for better participation by an increasing Hispanic population. Each school has access to a private website with curriculum documents, scheduling tools and gardening resources.
Our school has unanimously chosen year after year to renew our contract with Garden to Table because of the quality of support they offer, the benefit to students and the ease of use for teachers.
Amber Billington, Fireside Elementary 3rd grade teacher