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EarthBox in Our Schools:
Observe World Food Day With EarthBox on October 16
Let's feed the world one EarthBox at a time!
Teachers, are you looking for an engaging instructional tool and experiment to kick off the school year? Do you want to teach your students how to collect and analyze valid and reliable data in a controlled environment? Do you want to involve them in project-based learning focused on a critical issue? Look no farther than the EarthBox World Food Day School Kit (EBWFD School Kit).
Combined with an EarthBox Container Garden System, the EBWFD School Kit will supply you with all the material you need to perform an authentic experiment and further the goals of World Food Day.
In 30 or 50 days, under the proper growing conditions in spring, summer, or fall, one EarthBox Container Garden System will produce 2500 grams (25 servings of the Recommended Daily Intake) of mature Valmaine lettuce, or 1200 grams (12 RDI servings) of micro-greens in the container's controlled environment.
When you're finished with the classroom experiment, you can further test the hypothesis by registering on the Education, Agriculture and Technology (E.A.T.) website. There, among other things, students can compare and contrast the results of their experiment with the results of student experiments from all over the country. E.A.T. will share the results with policy makers to demonstrate the collective power of individual classroom experiments and the EarthBox Container Garden System's ability to feed the world.
Join the EarthBox World Food Day Campaign to feed the world, one EarthBox at a time. Order now from Carolina Biological, Fisher Science Education, or Nasco!
For information on starting your own EarthBox project, click here or contact our Education Department at 1-800-821-8838, ext. 8348 or 8369.
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Monthly Drawing for a $50 EarthBox Gift Certificate!
Educators, we want to support you in every way we can. One way we show our appreciation is with our bi-monthly drawing for a $50 EarthBox gift certificate.
This issue's winner is the Tunkhannock Community Garden in Wyoming County, PA. The garden, which is located next to the Department of Agriculture Building on State Route 92, is overseen by the County Director for the Penn State Agricultural Extension, Ms. Karen Bracey.
The local Animals R Us 4-H club, Mehoopany Junior Girl Scouts, and Step-by-Step have all volunteered to care for the garden and harvest its bounty.
Volunteer Sue Schaffer (pictured below) makes sure that the gardeners who come to water the plants daily also collect any produce that may be ripe. Tomatoes, peas, and summer squash are typical fruits of their labors. The food is then donated to the local Seven Loaves soup kitchen.
The composition of the soil used in the gardening containers was determined by County Extension master gardeners, who also provided technical support and plants. Funding for supplies was provided by the Oriental Grange. EarthBox,Traugers Greenhouse, and Agway have also contributed to the community garden's success.
"This is both an academic and a community service project for those groups," Shaffer points out. She dreamed up the idea when she realized that the local school district was no longer using 70+ gardening containers that it had purchased with grant money. Local interest groups soon got on board, adopting the garden as a whole.
Given the Tunkhannock Community Garden's great success, Director Bracey plans to conduct nutrition workshops this fall.
We'll be posting more winners as we choose them. Remember: to be eligible for the drawing, please mention the Source Code EDUDISC when ordering your EarthBox products.
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Are You in the STEM Directory?
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The National Directory of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) can help promote your after-school program, which in turn can lead to increased membership, funding, and partnership opportunities.
The Coalition for Science After School has partnered with Time Warner Cable to create this on-line national directory, and participation is absolutely free. Time Warner Cable, to support children and families, will promote STEM with Public Service Announcements throughout a five-year campaign.
EarthBox Education wants to collectively upload information to the site. To do this, we need to hear from you. Please email your contact information and program description to Molly at
molly.philbin@earthbox.com for loading. When the information is uploaded, you will receive an email with a login and password information, and you're in!
Other STEM News
Those educators who work with girls in STEM are encouraged to sign up for the National Girls Collaborative Project newsletter. If you do, please include the word "EarthBox" in the Program Title field.
EarthBox Education is supportive of The AfterSchool Alliance and the National AfterSchool Association as they conduct surveys to assess the state of STEM in afterschool and summer programs around the country. The data obtained will be vital to helping better describe and promote the STEM learning that occurs after school and during the summer.
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Greetings!
Here at EarthBox, we've been busily planning activities for the observance of World Food Day, and have developed a mantra for you, our valued educators: Grow Local, Think Global -- One Classroom at a Time!
World Food Day, observed on October 16, was proclaimed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 1979, and first observed in 1981 as a way to alleviate hunger and promote food security. Today, in its 30th year, 450 sponsors and communities all over the world organize WFD events to call upon governments to make the elimination of hunger and the advancement of food security a top priority.
This year, following a logical progression and a strong desire to make a difference, EarthBox has created a special EarthBox World Food Day School Kit (EBWFD School Kit) to support World Food Day's mission with year-round activities. The School Kit includes romaine lettuce seeds, a seed-starter kit, a CD that contains educational activities for students, and more.
By using the EBWFD School Kit, along with an EarthBox Container Garden System, a school classroom can grow a crop of romaine lettuce, learn about the importance of food security, and organize a World Food Day event at their school. As part of the World Food Day event, students can:
- Show how many healthy servings can be harvested from the EarthBox Container Garden System, as required by the Recommended Daily Intake (RDI).
- Prepare and eat the harvest.
- Donate the harvest to a food pantry.
- Present the harvest to another class.
Join the EarthBox World Food Day Campaign. Teach your students the importance of alleviating hunger and promoting food security, one classroom at a time. Order the EBWFD School Kit from Carolina Biological, Fisher Science Education, or Nasco today!
Healthfully yours,
Molly Philbin
Education Director
EarthBox, Inc.
"I ask no more than the justice of eating." -- Pablo Neruda, Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet |
 | EarthBox in Our Communities
E.A.T. and EarthBox Grow in Chicago
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Chicago is "growing" by leaps and bounds -- that is, many people are growing their own produce in EarthBox systems and in other gardens as part of a citywide program called E.A.T., which is an acronym for Education, Agriculture and Technology. E.A.T. is centered on using the World Wide Web and technology to connect, inform, and empower individuals with regard to growing food, eating healthier, and building community. Chefs, educators, businesses, and individuals come together under the E.A.T. umbrella to organize private and public community gatherings, from concerts to corporate events. All projects have the same primary goal: to provide the information and resources needed for people to make informed decisions about the food they eat.
 Uncommon Ground, a local restaurant and one of E.A.T.'s first partners, recently installed 32 EarthBoxes in custom stands made of 70% recycled material, converting their Clark Street sidewalk café into a sidewalk farm. The restaurant and E.A.T. are also collaborating on a World Food Day event, "EAT Up," in which individuals and organizations will share food, stories, and lessons learned from the 2011 growing season, and discuss initiatives for 2012.
E.A.T. is developing a Chicago area school contest "E.A.T. Your Words," which will ask students and teachers to submit plans for what they would grow if given 1, 10, or 100 EarthBoxes, the number of boxes corresponding to age/grade level. The winners will be announced at Uncommon Ground Restaurant on October 19, and they will be awarded EarthBoxes to be planted out in spring 2012.
Schools can also order the EarthBox World Food Day Kit from several national distributors. The Kit includes an experiment growing organic Valmaine romaine lettuce to collect data on water usage, climate, and yield. Teachers can upload the data the students collect to the E.A.T. website to compare the results of their experiment with the results of experiments performed by students from all over the country.
For more information, visit http://www.eat-chicago.org or contact Ken Waagner at ken@eat-chicago.org.
For EarthBox-specific questions, contact Molly Philbin at molly.philbin@EarthBox.com. |
| EarthBox Around the World
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Young gardeners, ranging from kindergarteners to students at culinary technical schools, have been getting firsthand experience at growing their own food in Alberta, Canada. Alberta Agriculture staff designed an EarthBox education project in 2009, and it's now active in more than 25 Alberta schools. Brent Andressen, Agriculture Education Specialist, is very pleased with the success of this effort, and believes that incorporating EarthBox's World Food Day School Kit into the curricula will further enhance food sustainability and encourage healthy choices.
 "For a growing number of people in an increasingly urbanized world, food comes from grocery stores." notes Andressen. "It's hard for people to care about the availability and quality of their food if they do not clearly understand how it is produced. World Food Day makes an important contribution to public food awareness by highlighting the importance of food and the natural and agricultural systems that are vital to its production.
"Growing lettuce in a World Food Day Kit provides a simple yet very effective hands-on way to help children understand the complex process of growing food. I'm sure it will be a great success."
To see the entire article about students growing in EarthBoxes in Alberta, click here.
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| Funding Opportunities
Grants for Teachers, and More
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Looking for money to apply to your EarthBox school garden? Check out this great teaching grants database! It's both easy and free, and grants are available for every grade level, from K-12.
This web page also includes a variety of articles about how to write your grants, including tips on how to get more grants, how to get an edge on your competition, why to even bother with grants, and plenty more.
Right now is a great time to focus on grant writing, as more grants are available to schools in the fall than at any other time of year. Also, fall grant money is often distributed in late fall, so you will benefit for almost the entire school year if you are awarded a grant!
Fuel Up to Play 60
Deadline: October 1, 2011
Funding is also available from the National Dairy Council and the National Football League for K-12 schools enrolled in Fuel Up to Play 60. This nationwide funding program, which awards up to $4,000 to winning schools, can help your school jumpstart and sustain healthy nutrition and physical activity improvements. For more information, click here!
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| Instructional Plan
EarthBox World Food Day School Kit
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 This issue's Instructional Plan focuses on the EarthBox World Food Day School Kit growing program, which makes it simple to grow delicious Valmaine lettuce from seed in observance of World Food Day, October 16. For a high-level overview of the Instructional Plan, click here.
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| EarthBox Distributors
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Here's a list of Education Distributor websites to assist you in obtaining catalogs and getting more info about using the EarthBox system in your classroom.
Carolina Biological
(Catalogs: Life Science, Environmental)
Escape Sports, Canada
Fisher Science Education
(Catalogs: Elementary, Middle School, High School, College Science)
Kaplan Early Learning
Kaplan K-5 Catalog
Nasco (Catalogs: Elementary Math/Science, Summit, Science, Senior Activities) S&S Worldwide
Sargent-Welch
Sargent-Welch, Canada
Science Kit Catalog
Science Museum Gifts
Spectrum Education Supplies (Nasco Canada) (Catalog: Secondary Science) Ward's Natural Science
Ward's of Canada |
| Join Our Community
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EarthBox is on Facebook! Now you can become a fan of EarthBox, joining a community of fellow EarthBox users for conversations, advice and photo sharing -- or just to check out whatever new information EarthBox has to enhance your gardening experience.
And don't forget to check out our videos! This is a members only feature, so if you're not already a Facebook member, you'll need to sign up to view the videos.
We'd also like to remind you about our forum, which you can find at http://forum.earthbox.com. We'd love for you to weigh in on any EarthBox matters that interest you, and show us how your EarthBox crops are faring this year. And don't hesitate to ask questions, because your fellow EarthBoxers are a wonderful source of information who will gladly help with any of your EarthBox issues!
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| Ordering | |
To place an order, call 888-445-6295 (24/7) or visit our online store.
Educators, please mention the Source Code EDUDISC when ordering your EarthBox to be eligible for a free $50 EarthBox gift certificate! Winners will be selected from our customer base and announced in each issue of our bi-monthly newsletter.
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| About EarthBox
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The patented EarthBox was developed by commercial farmers, and proven in the lab and on the farm. Our maintenance-free, award-winning, high-tech growing system controls soil conditions, eliminates guesswork, and more than doubles the yield of a conventional garden -- with less fertilizer, less water and virtually no effort.
It's used successfully on a daily basis by commercial farmers, educators, and consumers. Distributors are also finding it to be a popular growing system.
EarthBox is a remarkably easy-to-set-up system that can be used to grow produce virtually anywhere. EarthBox systems have been incorporated into community gardens all over the world, enabling families and neighbors to share fresh produce, while minimizing work and expenses.
EarthBoxes can even be found in classrooms. Our EarthBox Pre-K through 12th grade standards-based curriculum support packages can bring science to life, with hands-on cross-curricula lessons that teach principles of growing and nutrition utilizing the scientific method in student-driven experiments.
To find out more, click here.To request a catalog, call 888-917-3908. |
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