Farm to ECE connects children with local, fresh, and healthy foods while teaching them where the food comes from. The movement includes strategies and activities that are based on three core elements.

1. Purchasing and serving locally produced foods
2. Providing hands-on gardening opportunities
3. Incorporating nutrition, food, and agriculture education in the child care curriculum

Farm to ECE offers many benefits, such as:

• Providing access to healthy, local foods that increase children’s willingness to try and accept new foods
• Offering gardening and hands-on learning activities
• Encouraging family engagement opportunities to increase knowledge about healthy foods and local food systems
• Supporting local farmers and communities

You may be wondering if Farm to ECE will work in your program. Yes, it can! Farm to ECE activities can be adapted to fit different geographic locations, enrollment numbers, diverse ages and abilities of children, and ECE settings (e.g., preschools, child care centers, family child care homes, Head Start, and Early Head Start).

A core element of Farm to ECE is purchasing and serving local and seasonal foods in meals and snacks.

• Find out what grows in your region and allow flexibility in your menu to incorporate seasonal and local foods into healthy recipes. Use USDA’s Seasonal Produce Guide to identify in-season vegetables and fruits.
• Highlight local items on your menu for families to see.
• Spotlight a local farmer, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), or a farmer’s market vendor in the newsletter to let families know where your local menu items are grown or raised. Encourage families to buy local too!

Consider using a local farmer or Master Gardener from Cooperative Extension as an educational resource to engage children in learning.

• Take a field trip to a farm to explore and see firsthand where food is grown and raised.
• Ask if the children can sample some of the farmer’s products.
• Invite a local farmer or Master Gardener to speak about how food is grown. If you have a garden, give them a tour and ask for gardening tips.

Nutrition education curriculum provides lessons and ideas on including gardening experiences and nutrition education messages in classroom activities. Here are some suggested resources.

• Grow It, Try It, Like It! is a garden-themed nutrition education kit with Farm to ECE lessons and hands-on nutrition education activities for child care centers and family child care homes.
• Harvest for Healthy Kids provides free activity kits that include an activity plan, picture cards, newsletters, and recipes for 13 different fruits and vegetables.
• IATP’s Farm to Childcare Curriculum Package includes activity ideas and resources for implementing Farm to ECE at your center.
• A Guide to Using The Creative Curriculum^® to Support Farm-to-ECE Models explores how centers can use the Creative Curriculum^® to include Farm to ECE learning opportunities into existing practices.

Children love to use their imaginations and engage in dramatic play. To incorporate Farm to ECE into play, make sure the dramatic play area is stocked with fun and colorful replicas of healthy foods that can be used in many different scenarios. Below are some ideas of other items to include in the dramatic play area:

• Farm: hats, gloves, seed packets, plastic gardening tools
• Farmer’s market: chalkboards or paper for signs, play money, baskets
• Grocery store: shopping carts, cash register, receipts, grocery bags, recycled packaging from real food items, play money, grocery lists
• Restaurant: chef’s hat, apron, play kitchen tools, plates, utensils
• Flower shop: artificial flowers, containers, ribbon, flower catalogs, blank cards

While discussing healthy foods and where food comes from, encourage children to show their creativity through different art projects. Offer a variety of materials in the art area that children can incorporate into their artwork.

• Color or paint pictures about a garden or a farm, including the array of colors they’d find on the farm or in different vegetables.
• Have the children collect items from outside, such as leaves, sticks, and petals, to make a collage or use as a paintbrush.
• Use a variety of seeds (e.g., bean, sunflower, carrot, tomato, pea, etc.) to create a seed mosaic.

To encourage children to be physically active and explore different movements, they can:

• Practice skipping, galloping, and other movements by acting like their favorite farm animals (e.g., waddle like a duck, gallop like a horse).
• Sing and dance to food or animal-themed songs.
• Use plastic eggs to make seed maracas and invite children to sing and dance with their created instruments.

Select a variety of books that include stories about food, gardening, cooking, or farming. Here are some garden-themed books for preschoolers: