Ontario Local Food Week Celebration – Resources for Schools

June 6-12, 2016 is Ontario Local Food Week!

To celebrate, we’re inviting you to:

• Register yourself, your class, your school, or your whole school board with Foodland Ontario before or after you celebrate Ontario Local Food Week.
• Download fun curriculum linked class activities to use during Ontario Local Food Week (see below).
• During Local Food Week share photos of your class activities (e.g. everyone sharing a snack), a favourite selfie, or what you love about local food.  Tag your tweets using #loveONTfood to join the rest of the local food week celebrations.
• Download our Local Food Week Celebration Tip Sheet for Schools for other ideas about how you can celebrate.

Curriculum-linked activities for Local Food Week:

• Exploring Food Miles Activity (Gr 1-6): This game is a fun, energetic way to think about food miles (‘food miles’ refers to the distance food travels between farm and consumer). If you want to insert the names of local farms that ingredients come from here’s the .DOCX version of the Activity.  [Provided by Roots to Harvest]  
  
• Harvest of the Day Activities (Gr 1-6): This short activity guide offers a range of ideas for celebrating local food in the classroom including structured taste testing and making an Ontario availability chart. [Provided by FoodShare]
• The Real Cost of Food Activity (Gr 9): In this lesson, students watch a video on ‘The Real Cost of Food’ and then calculate and compare the cost of transporting non-local fresh produce to their local grocery store to the cost of transporting local produce. Extensions include looking at the other hidden costs of eating non-local produce.  The lesson plan comes with video links, worksheets, and extension activities. [Provided by Ecosource]

Additional local food education resources:

• Ecosource’s Classroom Connects Curriculum Package (Gr 9-12): This package has 15 detailed lessons plans (with curriculum connections, assessment opportunities and student worksheets) to open meaningful conversations with secondary students about our local food system.  They were written and conceived by Durham District School Board (DDSB) secondary school teachers and align with the Ontario provincial learning expectations for Science, Geography, Family Studies, Hospitality and Business.
• FoodShare’s Cooking & Tasting Toolkit (Activities from JK- Gr 12):  These lessons will introduce students to exciting ingredients, cooking techniques and tasting experiences using vegetables and fruits (local when possible), as the highlight. They will encourage students to embrace simple recipes and cooking challenges for their own skill development and enjoyment, and help make eating healthy food fun!  [Other food-related activities are available from FoodShare’s Resource Page for Educators]
• FoodShare’s Great Big Crunch 2016 Activity Guide (Gr 1-6): FoodShare’s Great Big Crunch invites students, teachers, educators and all good food enthusiasts to learn about healthy eating through the apple’s journey from seed, to harvest, to market, to table (and around again)!
• Ontario Agri-Food Education Inc. (Activities from Gr 1 – Gr 12): A wide range of downloadable curriculum-linked resources are available on the OAFE website. These have been designed to promote agri-food literacy. Classroom educators in grades 7-12 can also request a free Teacher Ambassador lesson and access agri-food career resources linked to the Ontario curriculum on OAFE’s other site www.growingcareers.ca.
• Fresh From the Farm’s Educator’s Page: Provides links to other classroom resources on food, healthy eating and agriculture. [Scroll down to section C. Local Food and Agriculture)

About our project partners:

Ecosource is an Ontario-based community environmental organization that inspires personal action and responsibility through creative programming for youth and communities. Ecosource has been leading projects pairing local food procurement with food literacy in Ontario schools since 2006.

FoodShare is a non-profit organization that works with communities and schools to deliver healthy food and food education. We believe everyone deserves access to affordable high-quality fresh food. Since 1985, FoodShare has pioneered innovative programs like the Good Food Box, impacted what kids eat in school, and improved the way people eat and grow food across Toronto every day.

Roots to Harvest is a not for profit and charitable organization in Thunder Bay that uses food and farming to engage, educate and employ high school aged youth. At the school level, Roots to Harvest works with schools and school boards in order to foster positive school food culture developments both with students and decision makers.

Sustain Ontario’s Edible Education Network brings together groups in Ontario that are connecting children and youth with healthy food systems. The network seeks to better enable these groups to share resources, ideas, and experience, work together on advocacy, and facilitate efforts across the province to get children and youth eating, growing, cooking, celebrating, and learning about healthy, local and sustainably produced food.

The Greenbelt Fund changes the way we eat food in Ontario. Our innovative investments get more local food onto the plates of Ontarians. We work with businesses, institutions and NGOs to make Ontario’s farmers the first choice for consumers. The Fund’s work has generated a 13-fold return on our investments, permanently changed the food value chain, and improved local food awareness and education across the province. As a not-for-profit, the Greenbelt Fund is supported by public and private sources.