Alderman Van Halderen recently visited one of the five elementary schools that received the lesson package 'Investigative learning with sprouts' from the local municipality. Students discover in different ways how sprouts grow, combined with short lessons about healthy food and lifestyle. The idea is to have students of the elementary schools in the Dutch province of Zeeland eat healthier and be more aware of their health.
Making an impact
The existing school fruit program of 40 weeks already contributes to this. In cooperation with the municipality of Veere, a start has been made with making a series of lessons about investigative learning available, using the growing of sprouts. Sprouts are healthy, grow fast, and are therefore ideal to use as a part of investigative learning. When the schoolchildren, together with alderman Van Halderen, were watching the roots of the sprouts, their mouths literally fell open with surprise.
Marloes Ketting, the school director: "A few days after sowing the sprouts, they have grown quite a bit. This makes the lesson package so interesting. The lessons are digital and ready made, and by adding what is going on in the classroom, we add even more meaning. We have now been able to combine the sowing lessons with a lesson in which the children have written and drawn about planting the sprouts. This makes writing more than a task, but an experience in itself. We are happy that we received this package from the municipality, and it leaves us wanting more."
FoodDelta stimulates the deployment in the entire province to make impact. Ronald de Vos, project manager: "We expect to start with more schools in the new school year. There already have been talks with other interested municipalities in Zeeland.
Cooperation is growth
FoodDelta Zeeland requested the innovative GrowWizzKid company to develop the lesson package. The contacts that GrowWizzKid already had with Wim Kuijper, the developer of the BIJT sprout nursery set from Zeeland, sped up the process. GrowWizzKid is a modern lesson concept that teaches children by growing crops in a meaningful and contemporary way about food, nature, and technique. The lesson series 'Investigative learning with sprouts' is only a part of it, but gives a clear picture of how the total lesson concept works.
Ida Hendricks, inventor and owner of GrowWizzkid: "Children are growing all year round in a sustainable indoor growing system with LED lighting in a substrate soil. And in the season, the children experience the difference with growing in a vegetable garden. With the sprouts lesson package, we hope that more and more schools in Zeeland will opt for our total concept, in which food education is not a separate process, but a structural part of the lesson program of a school."
For more information:
FoodDelta Zeeland
www.fooddeltazeeland.nl
GrowWizzKid
www.growwizzkid.nl