Resources For Educators

CPS Garden Planting Guides

Planning models for school gardens and features plants that are appropriate for the Chicago growing season.

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CPS School Garden Toolkit

Provides resources to support the creation, maintenance, and academic integration of growing spaces. This guide outlines strategies to align your school garden with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) wellness policies. The aim of this toolkit is to support our district in sustaining robust garden-based and environmental education for a more sustainable future.

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TEACH

Teaching Everyone about Cooking & Health (TEACH) courses are designed to equip you to become a nutrition and wellness ambassador for your students and community.

Common Bytes

Recipes, games, nutrition lessons, and other resources for learning about cooking healthy foods!

Small Bites on Demand 

FREE on-demand (self-paced) Small Bites lessons for elementary school-age children!

 

The Food Education Center

Includes Pre-K-12 lessons for students that make it easy to integrate food education into existing curricula and to inspire your students’ curiosity while continuing to build informed relationships with food. Pilot Light was started with chefs and teachers partnering together using food in the classroom as a tool to teach traditional school subjects, and now all teachers can use Pilot Light’s free lesson plans for their students!

Grow it, try it, like it!

Preschool Fun with Fruits and Vegetables. Grow it, try it, like it! preschool fun with fruits and vegetables is a garden-themed nutrition education kit for child care center staff that introduces children to: three fruits – peaches, strawberries, and cantaloupe, and three vegetables – spinach, sweet potatoes, and crookneck squash.

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Curriculum and Activities

Learning Garden curriculum options that focus on Food Literacy and Real Food Education.

Educator Bundles

A collection of activities that are short and easy to implement with limited supplies and without ever leaving the house.

Jumpstart: Teacher Resources
Resource Library

Looking for inspiration? Dig into these top-rated resources! Use the filters to explore guides, curricula, webinars and more for teaching and learning through the garden. 

Keep Growing Detroit’s Urban Gardening Guides are a series of short and easy-to-follow instructional guides designed by our staff to share the best practices that we’ve been honing for decades. Such as info on soil test, garden bed prep, planting garlic, and more! In addition to how to’s and helpful tips each guide features original artwork from Detroit’s talented gardening and farming community. Enjoy!

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Additional Resources

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