Key Messages:

• Healthy Bodies = Healthy Gardens
• There are many aspects to being healthy
• Eating fruits and vegetables can be easy
• Know the ingredients for both healthy gardens and bodies
• Be brave and try new foods
• Make half of your plate fruits and vegetables
• Be familiar with your fruits and veggies and the plant parts you are eating
• Eat a rainbow (vary your fruits and veggies and their colors)
• Focus on fiber (eat whole grains, fruits, and veggies)
• Compost completes the cycle

Teaching Principles:

Progression and Repetition

Topics are taught in a repetitive manner over time. This allows students to build upon earlier knowledge with new information. This teaching style reiterates the connectedness of these topics, encouraging students to see the correlation between science and their health and other aspects of life.

Multiple Teaching Styles

Nutrition, health and gardening are whole body concepts and activities. As such, we use three different approaches to teaching:

1. Lecture and discussion;
2. Activities and experiments;
3. Sensory experience of lessons taught.

Strengths Perspective

DUG believes that all people have innate capacities that, when encouraged, have potentially powerful and positive impacts on their communities. We tailor our activities to the students’ strengths, for example, directing students to gardening activities that suit their skills and motivations. Additionally, we reward class participation and encourage positive leadership by supporting pro-social behavior.