Learning to Grow

Over the course of the spring semester, CTAHR’s Student Organic Farm Training (SOFT) students and other volunteers have engaged 85 first-graders and 84 fourth-graders in garden activities, including planting their own vegetable plots, weeding and harvesting. Along with these hands-on activities, the elementary students also learned different parts of plants, cellular structure and function of plants and what plants need to survive and thrive. Recently Dietetics Program director Monica Esquivel, Giselle Bryant from the Sustainable and Organic Agriculture Program (SOAP), Dietetics undergraduate Aniase Soltren and Nutrition graduate student Teresa Lemoon joined in and visited the students to offer some important information about nutrition as they were doing the final harvest.