Healthy Schools Project

VUSD students have been enjoying the beautiful berries from Tamai Family Farms during the month of May🍓🍓🍓Ventura Unified School District

VUSD Nutrition and Garden Educator, Rose Wagner, and about 100 EP Foster 4th and 5th graders brought in over 30 pounds of sugar snap peas, cilantro, radishes, kale and onions! For their efforts, each student took home a bag of produce🥗 We were even able to save some broccoli for Mrs. Burrier’s Guinea pigs! Time for our Springtime crops🍓🧅🥬 E.P. Foster STEM Academy

Good things happening in VC🥕🥦🍅👩‍🌾

Growing farm-to-school effort links Ventura County students, at root level, to food Ventura County Farm to School is helping districts and students connect with food at its source.

Here is a fun way to celebrate Halloween with your kiddos! Try it and tell us how your family liked it :)

Halloween Snacks! Looking for some creative halloween snacks to make with your kiddos? Nutrition Specialist Ashley Parrish-Decker from the Healthy Schools Project, will show y...

4th and 5th graders at enjoyed picking the fruits of the labor from last school years Tomato, Cucumber and Corn planting! Each class got to taste something fresh from the garden, the tomatoes will be used in cooking classes, and the corn will be served on Mondays lunch menu!

I spy with my little eye something yellow and black! And just in time for the kiddos return!

are in season! We have a giant Sapote tree at the district learning garden and we harvested 123 lbs of fruit today! We have a few sites still doing lunches for summer, so we were able to distribute all the fruit to our families picking up summer lunches! Fun facts about Sapote Blanco; it’s known as the Mexican Apple, but is actually a fruit in the citrus family. The used the fruit as a . The leaves and bark were used as a sedative and to support diabetes. It’s rich in dietary fiber, potassium, Vitamin C and Iron. Great fruit to add to smoothies and to make ice cream with!

Such incredible good news :)

California Will Launch The Nation's Largest Free Student Lunch Program When classrooms reopen for the fall term, all of the state's 6.2 million public school students will have the option to eat school meals for free, regardless of their family's income.

Local community group Ojai CRA - Center for Regenerative Agriculture is planting 160 fruit trees in Westside front yards, all at no cost to residents. We are focusing on the older neighborhood flats between Main St. and Stanley Ave. We need interested residents who want trees in their front yards to apply AND we are also looking for residents to serve as block captains to help their neighbors to sign up for their trees.
Join us Saturday, June 26th from 9am to 12pm at the Fire Station (corner of Ramona and Ventura Ave.) to learn how you can get a free fruit tree in your Front Yard AND/OR become a block captain to get your friends and neighbors on board too! RSVP to [email protected]
Programa de Plantación de Árboles Frutales
El Centro de Agroecología ha recibido una subvención para plantar 160 árboles frutales en los jardines/patios delanteros en el lado oeste de Ventura (los barrios ubicados en el norte y el sur de Ventura Avenue.) Únete a nosotros el sábado, 26 de Junio desde las 9-12pm en la estación de bomberos (esquina de Ramona y Ventura Ave). Para aprender cómo puedes recibir un árbol de fruta en tu patio delantero, Y/O para ser un capitán para tu cuadra e involucra a tus amigos y vecinos también! RSVP to [email protected]

This past school year, the Healthy Schools project put out the call to the community to support us, so we could continue meeting the needs of the whole child. We are beyond grateful for the support we received from our local, state and national community. Thank you all so much for believing in what we do! Sage Garden Project Sprouts Farmers Market Lux Amare Closed Group Duda Farms Limonera Rincon-Vitova Insectaries Friends of Fieldworkers, Inc. Sunset School PTA Sheridan Way ElemPTA UC Agriculture & Natural Resources Lowe's Home Improvement

Harvesting and planting out the gardens for Summer with students is the perfect way for the Healthy Schools Project to round out this crazy school year. See you all in the Fall😊

The final Family Cooking Night of the school year was a blast! Families prepared a delicious Strawberry & Ojai Pixie Tangerine Spinach Salad alongside Ms. Wagner. YUM! We look forward to seeing you next year on ZOOM to prepare more delicious, farm-to-table creations!

VUSD students at three of our schools received a healthy dose of Vitamin C this week courtesy of locally grown strawberries from Tamai Family Farms and Rodelo Farms🍓🍓

A Huge Thanks to the incredible kitchen staff Ventura Unified School District ! We are so grateful to work alongside you! This year, every kitchen deserves the golden carrot award!!!

It has been such a pleasure working with Parent Volunteer Sandy Lang in our garden spaces! Not only is she a hard worker, she is a a constant ray of sunshine :) Thank you Sandy!!

Congratulations to Scott Mastroianni! He is an incredible supporter of The Healthy Schools Project, This year he helped us get our family cooking nights off the ground and we couldn't be more grateful for his partnership!

Congratulations to Megan Suddeth-Rodriguez! She has always been an enthusiastic collaborator with the Healthy Schools Project, and we are beyond grateful for her!

Happy Earth Day

Celebrating Spring time with mindful snap pea and snow pea tastings with some kindergarten friends at Will Rogers Elementary School🌱 The Healthy Schools Project is so happy to finally restart in-person Harvest of the Month lessons and outdoor, socially-distanced mindful tastings.

On April 27, bring your students or children to join us for a virtual journey from the Big Island of Hawai’i to Washington, DC, as we visit school gardens across the country! At each stop on this first-ever, coast-to-coast school garden tour, we’ll hear from students in unique and diverse communities to see how they are engaging in hands-on learning, growing healthy food for themselves and their communities, and becoming caretakers of their local environments.

Students will share activities for you to try in your own school gardens, or at home with your kids! The program can be viewed as a 45-minute livestream during the event, or can be accessed afterwards as separate lesson videos, each lasting about 3-5 minutes. To register go to School Garden Support Organization - SGSO - Network

Cuties at Elmhurst Elementary School Parent, Staff, and Friends Organization Harvesting the Fruits and Veggies they Grew! Sage Garden Project

A favorite DL lesson we have been using comes from our wonderful supporters at the Sage Garden Project. We have had such a blast building model compost jars and teaching students 3rd-7th the nuts and bolts of composting. When students were asked to make an Ad about the benefits of composting some got very creative! We also had a great class discussion on the google Jam board about what they knew, what sparked curiosity and what surprised them about Compost. SO MUCH FUN! These kids are going to do a lot of good in this world!!

So grateful for our partnership with Sage Garden Project! The teachers are going to LOVE reading these books to their students this spring!

The more you know!

Our resident Gardenator, Mrs. Snacky, has a tip for managing some of our gardens’ most insidious insects: “This time of year aphids often attack our greens. Did you know that applying worm castings to your beds can reduce or eliminate the aphid population?!? Worm castings contain an enzyme called chitinase that breaks down the exoskeleton of insects, thereby acting as a natural repellant for these stubborn sap suckers.” Do you have any tips for aphids??

Check out our outdoor school garden classrooms! We love teaching and learning in nature. There is so much to explore and engage. Students can practice being artists, scientists, readers, mathematicians, gardeners, adventurous eaters...the list goes on and on! Sage Garden Project

Sunset students did a wonderful job planting sugar snap peas in their outdoor school garden classroom. We can't wait to enjoy the harvest this spring! Sage Garden Project Ventura Unified School District

An incredible day of at multiple orchards today. We are so grateful for Tree Jays Tree Care and for Mrs. Viscarra at ATLAS for connecting us with such incredible humans! The trees are stoked on their “hair cuts”

Almost 50 Ventura Unified School District families joined us for our monthly family cooking night! We can’t get enough of these, folx! Such a sweet way to connect with our students and their families. This month we featured oranges 🍊 in our Cool Cabbage Salad! Shout out to for your support of our program! We are so grateful for you!

The Healthy Schools project team has really been enjoying practicing our observation skills with our wonderful little science students! Ventura Unified School District

Sunset School students are having a blast learning about and observing decomposition! Students built their very own Model Compost Jars during a 5-week long Learning-at-Home Science Investigation. We are grateful to Sage Garden Project for supporting the Healthy Schools Project at Sunset this year. Ventura Unified School District

Food Justice is Social Justice! The Healthy Schools Project is devoted to making sure our students have access to delicious, local heathy foods whenever possible! Thank you Martin Luther King and countless other for paving a way forward, we will continue to fight the good fight

The Story of Martin Luther King Jr. by Kid President Once upon a time, there was a man named Martin Luther King, Jr. He taught us that things won't always be awesome, but your response can be. Remember, things ...

Thanks for the heads up about this awesome event! We want student voices heard about school food! Students, join this event and share your opinions!

So grateful we have been able to provide our families in the HSP community delicious and locally grown produce! Thanks and San Miguel Produce

Happy Kale Month!

January Cooking Class - Super Kale Salad with a Tangy Lemon Dressing The Healthy Schools Project partnered with the UC Hansen Research and Extension Center this month to provide some of our families with Kale, Carrots and Lemo...

Some fun ideas for holiday gift wrapping!

How-To: Earth-Friendly Gift Wrapping - KidsGardening Give Mother Nature the gift of reusable or biodegradable wrapping with these fun ideas for festive gift coverings at any time of year.

Happy Carrot Month! Today, families at Lincoln, Blanche Reynolds and Elmhurst received carrots from John Givens Farm, Something Organic, in Goleta! Want to eat carrots in a fun new way? This month we choose a Moroccan style Spiced carrot salad, with cilantro, cumin, paprika salt and lemon! You can get creative on how your students cut the carrots, so many options! Enjoy!

December Harvest of the Month - Spiced Carrot Salad The Healthy School Project (HSP) Team teaches students and trains teachers at Ventura Unified School District how to make salad that feature fruits and veget...

Earlier this year we sent sunflower seed grow kits to TK and K students at Elmhurst Elementary. One of our teachers sent us this photo of a sweet little kinder showing his excitement about his sprouting sunflower seeds! YAY