 Thursday, February 21, 2019 from 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM (PST) Central Santa Rosa Library 211 E Street Santa Rosa, CA 95404 The Sonoma County Healthy Students Initiative in partnership with the Dept. of Health Services will offer this free workshop to prepare school districts for the first Local School Wellness Policy (LSWP) statewide administrative review under USDA Final Rule regulations coming up next year.
Whether your district has just (or even not yet) begun the process of updating policy language to comply with the new requirements or has already implemented changes and is preparing assessment and documentation approaches, this session is designed to help you identify the most impactful next steps you can take toward compliance. Heather Reed, Nutrition Education Consultant for the California Dept. of Education will offer guidance on how best to prepare for state administrative review under Final Rule, regardless of how much progress you've made to date. Following are breakout working sessions tailored to address your district's specific area of need. Whether you are accountable for ensuring LSWP compliance within your school district or you are an individual stakeholder working on wellness initiatives, this session is for you. All members of your school wellness team are welcome to join this training. Attendees will network with peers and wellness experts from across Sonoma County, learn key strategies for complying with LSWP requirements under Final Rule and take away tools and resources to efficiently prepare for administrative review. Attend The School Garden Network is hosting a POP UP & FUNDRAISER this Monday Jan 14th from 5:30-8:30pm at Lagunitas Tap Room in Petaluma.
Join us for an evening of dancing to the popular local band Dgiin, dining on asian street food from Jam’s Joy Bungalow Food Truck, and donating to a great community cause. There will be wonderful auction items and a warm community vibe. 100% of Beer Sales Goes Directly to the School Garden Network! Bring the family and connect with the community of SGN! Non alcoholic beverages will be served by Sonoma Enlivened (the people that brought you The Kefiry). A special thanks to Taylor Lane for helping to sponsor the event! Email any questions to Lynn Hope to see you there!  The Worm Wizard of Waste Program is looking for highly motivated schools in Sonoma Valley (3rd grade and up) with the capacity to initiate or improve an institution-wide daily practice of recycling organic waste through on-site vermiculture systems!
If your Sonoma Valley school would like to participate in our Worm Wizard of Waste program during the 2019- 2020 school year, or you would like to learn more about our program please go to www.wormwizards.org or contact our ProgramManager Oona Heacock - oona@ncrcanddc.org (707) 978-4149.  Strawberry plants can be picked up during the schedule listed below at Bounty Farm (55 Shasta Ave. Petaluma, CA 94952). Their preference is to donate to under-resourced communities that may not have the option to grow strawberries otherwise. If you will take a large number (over50), please contact them ahead of time (farm@petalumabounty.org or (707) 364-4883). Thursday, 11/29: 2pm - 5pm Saturday, 12/1: 9am - 12pm We have two varieties available (more variety information below). Once we run out of a variety, we will post on our Facebook page. More information on strawberry varieties from Lassen Canyon Nursery website: Chandler continues to be one of the “go to” varieties for roadside strawberry stands, backyard gardeners everywhere and many commercial growers in the southeast. Chandler produces semi-early delicious sweet fruit. Fruit size is medium to large and medium in firmness. Chandler performs well in the east and is well adapted to the south. Sweet Ann is a vigorous plant with high productivity and exceptional flavor. The attractive fruit is large in size, with a beautiful long conical shape. It has medium firmness with a good acid-sugar balance and very sweet taste. Sweet Ann is a glossy red color both inside and out. The variety produces few runners in the fruiting field. Sweet Ann seems quite disease resistant to everything but fusarium wilt. It is an excellent choice for the organic production systems.   Sonoma County Bee Keepers Association offers free educational presentations with activities for classes with grade appropriate material. They prepare several hands-on activities including singing, drawing, and manipulating bee-related paraphernalia. Also covered are more advanced topics in genetics and environmental issues for high schools and adults. Please see this document for a general outline of the various topics covered: Topics Covered in School Presentations (PDF).
For more information and to request a free presentation at your school. Visit their website here.  This month, NestWatch unveiled a new FREE resource for educators of middle school students (grades 5-8). Thinking Outside The (Nest) Box, It includes a series of five activities leading youth through the steps of making a nest box for small songbirds, placing it in the appropriate habitat, and monitoring the birdhouse as a citizen scientist. Students get hands-on experience while learning about the life cycles of birds.
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Botany on Your Plate is an inquiry-based curriculum for grades k-5 developed by the University of California’s Botanical Garden. The units weave together nutritional health, mathematics, language arts, social studies and investigative science.
We will be tasting our way to nutrition and science, so come learn from experienced garden educators, as they explore this cross-cutting curriculum.. Plus receive a 25% discount on the book and any gardening supplies from the Gardener's Supply Company. Additional Themes will include: Nutritional empowerment Food literacy programming in schools Positive classroom management strategies Gardening skills Location: Permaculture Skills Center, 2185 Gravenstein Hwy S, Sebastopol, CA 95472 Date: November 8, 2018 9am-4pm Fee: $135 Discount Rate: $114.75: Receive a 15% discount if you come with a team member or if you register by October 25th. Mail a check to: P.O. Box 1367, Sebastopol, CA 95473 CEU credit available Garden Lunch provided REGISTER HERE Instructors: Kaelyn Ramsden is a farmer and educator living in Northern California who is dedicated to making learning come alive in the outdoor classroom. Her work since graduating from the Community Studies program at UC Santa Cruz where her focus was environmental justice has continued to be deeply rooted in building the strength and resilience of her local communities through education and farming. As the former School Garden Coordinator at Harmony Unified School District, Kaelyn worked to advance the farm-to-school movement by teaching kids of all ages to grow food for their cafeteria and local community. Her classes aim to inspire reverence for the land and the responsibility we have to protect it. Anne Loarie is the Garden and Wellness Teacher at Alexander Valley School and the Healthy Roots Program Director at School Garden Network. She integrates common core curricular concepts in a structured garden setting for K-6 classrooms. She emphasizes the interconnectedness between the plants we eat, food systems, cultural relationships to food and how we view and frame healthy eating in our society. Her goal as an educator is to cultivate the “aha!” moments in children as they learn that they can, in fact, enjoy healthy eating. Laurel Anderson is a long time garden educator with a passion for sharing the joys of the garden with youth. She is currently very interested in schoolyard habitats, seed saving, heirloom beans and Monarchs!! She is currently on the board of directors of the School Garden Network and is partnering with the US Fish & Wildlife Service on our local Schoolyard Habitat program.  Student Activity Field Testing Opportunity
Want to play a part in helping Beetles publish resources for instructors? Sign up to help them test out new BEETLES student activities! Testing and feedback from instructors in different settings are important parts of making their activities work well with audiences across the country (and other countries too). Activities ready for testing include a beach exploration, 2 garden based activities, an adaptations activity, and a routine to set up group agreements for science discussions. Field testers will receive a $20 stipend for each activity tested. Interested? Fill out this survey. Reminder: Send them your awesome activities! BEETLES wants you to send them your outstanding student activities! These should be activities that take place outdoors and involve students engaging directly with nature. BEETLES will read all activities submitted, choose two they think can be shared nationally, then revise and field test them. The resulting “rockstar” activities will be published with a shared copyright agreement between the organization that submitted them and BEETLES. Want to know more? See the full announcement and guidelines here.  FREE plants are available to all school gardens at the Ceres Community Project's Sebastopol garden site care of Sweetwater Nursery . There are Broccoli, Chinese Cabbage, Califlower, Komastsuna Summer Fest, Pak Choi, Mizuna Lime Stream and more! All the seedlings are organic and are ready to be planted!
You can find the plants on the pallets outside of the greenhouse on the left side of the garden. Please water them before you leave. Thank you for being mindful of the signs, and closing the gate behind you. A special thanks to Sweetwater Nursery for supporting school gardens and for the Ceres Community garden for always hosting a place for SGN's free plants.  The School Garden Network (SGN) has been working in partnership with US Fish and Wildlife Service (US F&WS) since 2012 to develop and implement the Schoolyard Habitat Program (SHP) in Sonoma County. We are thrilled to announce a recipient of our 2018 Schoolyard Habitat Grant, Village Charter School. We know they will create a wonderful space for children and wildlife to interact. The Schoolyard Habitat Program helps teachers and students create wildlife habitat at their own schools. A schoolyard habitat project is a naturalized habitat area that is used for classroom field studies and observations. A well-designed project that is integrated into the curriculum will foster long-term ecological stewardship in children of all ages. For more information please visit our Schoolyard Habitat Programs page HERE.  |
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