Project Overview

Establishing healthy eating habits in early childhood is vital for a person's physical growth and cognitive development. For children ages six months to five years old receiving care outside of the home, over half of their daily calories are consumed in an early child care setting. Early child care environments have a significant influence on learned eating behaviors and are an important setting for nutritional interventions. Serving local foods and offering related hands-on learning activities can increase a child's fruit and vegetable intake and willingness to try new fruits and vegetables. 

In partnership with the Kansas Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom, the Kansas Department of Agriculture seeks to increase child nutrition knowledge and consumption of fruits and vegetables by providing Kansas licensed early child care providers with age-appropriate agriculture education curriculum and resource kits to teach children about Kansas fruit and vegetable production. While teaching the curriculum, early child care providers and organizations administering the project on behalf of child care providers in a community or region will be eligible to receive reimbursement for purchases of locally grown fruits and vegetables used in the lessons.

The project titled “Our Earliest Eaters: Bringing the Farm to Kansas Licensed Early Child Care” is made possible by the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service.

Agriculture Education Curriculum

The Kansas Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom has developed age-appropriate agriculture education curriculum for this project that includes activities and resources for lessons in all four growing seasons. Each lesson features a specialty crop that is seasonally available in Kansas during that time of the year. The lessons are available for free at the following links:

• Seeding Spinach (Spring)
• A Taste of Melon (Summer)
• Awesome Apples (Fall)
• Sensory Squash (Winter)

By showing children how specialty crops are grown in Kansas, letting them engage their senses to see, feel, smell, and taste specialty crops in their raw form, and teaching basic culinary skills like peeling and slicing, the project will increase children's willingness to try fruits and vegetables and improving their nutritional behaviors to have a lasting impact on their diets, while helping them learn about the origins of their food.

Resource kits provided through the project included classroom posters, lesson cards, story books, and child-safe knives, and cutting boards for hands-on learning in the classroom.

Locally Grown Fruits and Vegetables

Through this project, child care providers and organizations administering the project on behalf of child care providers in a community or region received reimbursements to cover the costs of purchasing fruits and vegetables grown by Kansas farmers and producers used in the lessons. The Kansas Department of Agriculture helped identify farmers and producers to purchase fruits and vegetables from.

The reimbursements offered through this project were a way to incentivize local food purchases to benefit our state's fruit and vegetable farmers and producers and hopefully helped foster long term purchasing relationships to be sustained after the project concluded.