When I shared my copy of the book Early Sprouts: Cultivating Healthy Food Choices in Young Children with a nutritionist friend, she got very excited about the possibilities, but then her job changed and she no longer works directly with children. Did that stop her? Read on…

I am doing Early Sprouts with my neighbor Sydney (4 years old) every Saturday afternoon. We did the initial taste tests and we’ve done five or six of the sessions, with the activity and then the cooking back to back. It takes about an hour. We’ve made couscous castles with green peppers, Chinese green beans, butternut squash pancakes (too wet but yummy), yogurt dip, and pasta with sauce made from cherry tomatoes. I love it. I took photos of the plants in the garden in different stages and made cards out of them and at the beginning of each class, she sorts them into piles by vegetable and then puts the cards for each vegetable in order from sprout to plant to flower to small fruit to large unripe fruit to ripe fruit, or whatever applies to the vegetable. I also took photos of the compost pile.
Wish I could send you some of our raspberries.

What she’s begun with one child she can use to inform her teaching with more, in future years. The materials can be used every year too—each following year will need less set-up time.
Read more about the Early Sprouts program at www.earlysprouts.org.
Thanks for the inspiration, Bonnie!