Sprouting Success with Farm to School

Our popular classroom sprouting kits are back! 

In the winter of 2021, we were looking to engage classrooms in Farm to School programming. We dusted off the archives of some old projects and decided to try out sprouting kits. And oh boy, was it a hit.

Sprouting kits seem pretty simple: each student gets an aluminum tray, some soil, growing instructions, and sunflower or bean shoot seeds. But multiply that number by 800—the amount we delivered to schools across Windham County in 2021—and it goes from a simple project to one that has a significant impact on our community. Imagine 800 students across the county taking care of their seeds, watching them grow, and taste testing them in a few short weeks!

And the sprouting kits were a huge success last year. Teachers could have a pre-packaged lesson planned that was easy to implement in their classrooms. Farm to School and gardening activities might be challenging for some teachers to implement in the cold winter months. This indoor activity enables all students access to farming and nutrition education, even when the school garden might be dormant. This hands-on opportunity to learn about planting seeds prepped the students for their spring school garden work and got many students excited about growing their food.

Because of the huge response to this program last year, Food Connects relied heavily on donations from our corporate sponsors like the Brattleboro Automall. The Brattleboro Automall feels a special responsibility to serve our local community and support local groups and events whenever possible. We are grateful for their continued support of our Farm to School program and ensuring we can continue to provide these excellent sprouting kits to the children in our local schools!

We are excited to announce that sprouting kits requests are now open for 2022.

We hope that bringing back our Sprouting Kits helps provide an opportunity for hands-on growing in your classroom. We will provide all of the materials, a lesson guide, and coaching from our FTS team to make sure you feel confident implementing this activity in your classroom. It could potentially tie into your science unit, be a primer for more growing projects this spring, or simply be a fun, hands-on activity for your students.  

Food Connects will deliver classroom kits to your school that contains: 

• Aluminum trays for each student to grow their sprouts

• Soil

• Seeds (sunflower and pea)

• Growing instructions

• An optional lesson guide and book recommendations to pair with the activity

The Farm to School Year in Review

Mixing bowls full of tropical fruits and veggies, hot plates frying up potatoes, and new foods abound (think tamarind, hibiscus, and cassava). This past June, Green Street School’s sixth-grade French class prepped mango and avocado salad from Seychelles alongside a hearty Haitian riz colle, in addition to 9 other dishes and drinks to celebrate six years of learning about French language and culture.

Back in October of 2020, this would have seemed impossible. Thanks to dedicated educators throughout the region and Food Connects support, Farm to School scenes like this cooking experience continued throughout the year and helped provide normalcy to an otherwise challenging year.

Many educators saw Farm to School as a means to get students out of the classroom. “Gardening time was an absolute highlight of the day for me and my students,” reflected Molly Stoner, a 4th-grade teacher at Dummerston School. “Students would run out and check for sprouting/growth in their milk jug greenhouses the second they got to school. Later in the spring, adding compost to beds, planting and watering the seed they sown, taking home sprouts enriched us all and kept us grounded in all the potential of our beautiful Vermont land."

This spring, Dummerston planted 12 apple trees donated by Scott Farm Orchard. Many other school gardens expanded as well. For example, Grafton Elementary School added a pumpkin patch to their school garden. Central Elementary School in Bellows Falls expanded its urban growing space and plans to develop a more robust Farm to School program that emphasizes community connections. 

For those feeding our students, the year never let up. Born out of the pandemic, our Who Feeds Our Kids series celebrated the school nutrition professionals who remain the backbone of the school community. Responding to rising food insecurity, they sent out weekend and school break food boxes. With local food from the Food Connects Food Hub highlighted, the food boxes provided another layer of support for families experiencing food insecurity. We’re excited to see the expanded service stay for years to come. 

Food Connects’ flexible support helped schools maintain their programs and respond quickly to new obstacles; when our network schools couldn’t find COVID-19 cooking guidelines, we researched CDC recommendations to create a protocol for educators to follow. We put together 800 sprouting kits for students during the doldrums of late winter, adding some greenery to classrooms and anticipation for more planting come spring. 

“It’s the creativity and flexibility that we saw throughout the pandemic that is going to help us spring forward next year,” says Conor Floyd, Food Connects Farm to School Program Manager.  “We’re excited to continue working alongside our school partners to develop new programming opportunities.”

Sprouting in Schools

This spring, classrooms across Windham County are overflowing with sprouts as students grow their sunflower and pea shoots. Ellen Nam’s Kindergarten class at Academy School has joined in the fun, and her students are discovering the wonder of gardening! 

To help make food, farming, and nutrition education more accessible for teachers, Food Connects sent out over 800 sprouting kits to classrooms throughout the county last month. Growing sprouts is an easy, hands-on way to get students excited about the coming spring season. Connections to learning standards throughout the grades mean it’s easy to tie the activity into existing units. Since sending out the kits, photos of smiling faces and towering shoots have been finding their way back to the Farm to School team.

In Ellen’s class, each student got to build their kits, adding the right amount of soil, water, and seeds to their growing tray before finding the right environment in the classroom for their sprouts to thrive. As any gardener knows, it was then a waiting game as students’ anticipation grew alongside their newly planted crops. 

The highlight came when it was time for each student to harvest their sprouts and make an individual salad of sprouts, cherry tomatoes, and ranch! Curricular connections came easy since students in Kindergarten explore the needs of living things—Ellen’s Kindergarteners can now tell you all about how plants need soil, water, and light to grow through their firsthand experiences with their sprouts. The growing didn’t end after the first harvest either—students were surprised and excited to see their plants continue to grow, and a week later, the class was able to harvest another batch of sprouts for a second snack. 

We are thrilled to see so many students excited about growing their food. We’re also grateful for all the teachers who brought the activity into their classrooms—it shows a broad interest in Farm to School programming in our schools and community. Food Connects looks forward to strengthening and expanding our partnerships with classrooms across Windham County, making Farm to School integration easy and fun for everyone.