Garden Club was so honored to be featured for this year’s Heart Health Assembly for all TFES students and staff. Coach Elise Carlin of Life in Motion Boot Camp, helped raise the roof and the cheetah’s heartrate with exciting exercise and an interactive lesson about how exercise is good for our body and mind. Tracy Nyszczot, the leader of the TFES Garden Club engaged our students with mini-lessons using games and asking our students about goals, what a balanced meal looks like, how plants can benefit our body and mind. Kids were excited to learn that each color in edible plants represent a nutrient that feeds our each of our body’s systems (see the graphic below for details).
MyPlate: “You Are What You Eat”
Remember the food pyramid? Meet MyPlate, the official symbol of the five food groups. Learn how to make MyPlate work for you.
MY PLATE: Each meal should include: lean protein, fruit, veggie, whole grains, and a little bit of dairy.
Myplate.gov has lots of free activities, printables, and even online games all about how to eat a balanced diet.
You can break it up by having 1-2 of the food groups as a snack. For example, eat fruit/cheese for your after school snack and then focus on the vegetables, protein and grains for dinner. Make it a goal or a requirement to have your child eat all their food groups BEFORE eating a treat — Because your tastebuds don’t like the real food after the sugar.
We also learned about “serving size” aka “portion”, which equals the size of your palm (kids eat a their sized palm portion amount).
EAT MORE PLANTS
One of the main lessons of Garden Club in general (part of our mission) is to encourage our gardening families to eat more plants! Each school year, we drive home the importance of eating plants, as each student can try some of each food from our spring harvest with a Salad Party (click to read about 2024’s salad parties).
Did you know that some of the healthiest, happiest people around the world have a mainly plant-based diet?
We are not saying that you cannot eat meat, but when you do, opt for lean protein and meats that are not processed, easier to digest like chicken, turkey and fish.
You can have fun snacks, however, if you just add a couple of servings of vegetables or fruit a day, you can really change your health and happiness.
In fact, one cup of beans a day, can add 4 years to your life.
A wonderful show that families can watch together is called “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones on Netflix, to learn about how gardening and plants are at the center of the healthiest , happiest places to live on Earth!
EAT THE RAINBOW
The colors in edible plants actually say something about the vitamins found in those foods. Each color food has a unique benefit to the body. So, if you want a balance of nutrients, eat the rainbow. During the assembly, we played a game “Spin the Wheel – What’s that Plant’s Power? — by Color” and interactively learned about the facts below:
Rainbow MyPlate Coloring Page
Download a printable coloring page for your family to learn more about creating a well-balanced meal that will feed your body/mind, so you can crush those 2025 goals! CLICK TO DOWNLOAD.
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TFES GARDEN CLUB 