Archive by Author

Think Healthy Thursday: Ann Cooper on School Lunches

Posted on December 8, 2011 by in Garden Heroes, Think Healthy Thursday

Yesterday I listened to a TED talk that really inspired me. Ann Cooper (The Renegade Chef) spoke about school lunches and how she has gone about making school lunches healthier. It strengthened my passion for helping kids make healthy decisions – please watch the video and see if it doesn’t inspire you too.

Few things are more important than kids health – whether we’re talking about kids in Chile or in our own backyard. Like Ann Cooper, we’re not simply talking about kids feeling and looking good. We’re talking about raising kids without lifelong ailments (such as Diabetes) and helping kids get the nutrition they need to form fully working brains. It’s our future as well as their future at stake.

Ann talks about how fast food industries have appealed to kids by making “chicken” look like something they like, such as stars. We have taken a similar marketing strategy in a different direction with our Garden Heroes. We are helping kids learn to love what’s healthy by using good marketing to promote fruits and vegetables. It’s just one step we’ve taken – but it seems apt in light of her example.

We challenge you to think about how you are using good marketing with your kids, grandkids, students or patients to promote healthy food. Need some help? Try our free downloadable game that walks kids through the process of trying new foods.

National Handwashing Awareness Week

Posted on December 6, 2011 by in Health News, Special Offers

Take advantage of this fun observance to stress the importance of clean hands to your children.  Washing your hands often is the easiest thing you can do to stay healthy.

In honor of this great week, we have a free, downloadable “Handwashing Rap” poster to share with you. It’s perfect for your home or classroom.

Make handwashing exciting by adding a fun, musical beat. And even though we’re celebrating December 4-10 for National Handwashing Awareness week, if you keep this poster handy, you and your children can celebrate every day!

If you’re voice is warmed up, and you’re ready to rap, download it here!

Happy Handwashing!
To see other handwashing/hygiene products from LZX, click here.

Garden Hero on the Go: Where is Adam Apricot

Posted on December 5, 2011 by in Garden Heroes

Garden Heroes are on the go. Adam Apricot is on the road and has stopped in a small town. Guess Where in the World Adam is and WIN A FREE GARDEN HERO of your choice. Be the first to guess correctly, and choose a single character from any of the 39 Garden Heroes! (Please post guesses on Facebook – only one winner!) If you have recently won a Garden Hero, please give someone else a chance.

MyPlate Posters and Tablets on Sale!

Posted on December 2, 2011 by in Uncategorized

I’m sure by now you’re all familiar with USDA’s MyPlate icon. Or are you? There are quite a few people who still reference the traditional food pyramid, so let’s quickly recap…

The USDA MyPlate encourages us to:

  • Make half our plate fruits and vegetables
  • Switch to skim or 1 percent milk
  • Make at least half our grains whole
  • Vary our protein food choices

These healthy tips compliments of the USDA help us maintain balanced diets and make the right choices when it comes to what’s on our plate! The icon has been in place for exactly six months now, and to celebrate, we are having a sale!

USDA MyPlate Posters in English and Spanish (MiPlato) are discounted from $14.95 to just $9!
USDA MyPlate Tablets in English and Spanish (MiPlato) were $9.95 and are now only $7!

Celebrate nutrition with these fun reminders. Offers are only good for the month of December, so check them out today!

LZX in the movies again!

Posted on November 29, 2011 by in We're Famous!

We’re excited today because we’ve been contacted by another studio about using Learning ZoneXpress products on set. Here’s what they told us…

Inspired by the award winning documentary, “PLANET B-BOY,” “BATTLE OF THE YEAR” is a multicultural sports film set in the world of International Break Dancing.  After a decade of defeat and lost respect for the United States b-boy crew, a hip-hop mogul turns to his down-and-out former crewmate to train and coach an all-star team of U.S. B-Boys to compete at the Battle of the Year (BOTY) World Championships. The coach must overcome his inner demons, while the b-boy standouts struggle amongst themselves and with their new coach’s unorthodox training methods.

It won’t open until next summer but it sounds great for kids and we know they’ve got great (healthy) taste!

We have a sneak preview of the items that you might see. I think it’s fun to think up story lines based on their choices.

Cranberry: Healthful & Delicious!

Posted on November 25, 2011 by in Garden Heroes, USDA MyPlate

Still feeling full after your Thanksgiving dinner? If you included cranberries in your meal, you can feel very good about some of your choices. Raw cranberries are often called superfruits. But before we get to the nutrition, we wanted to share some history of the cranberry – one of our favorite fruits and a great addition to MyPlate healthy choices.

In The Beginning

Cranberries grow in bogs in cooler regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Located in the Northern Hemisphere, we can tell you that many communities claim to be the cranberry capital including Middleborough, Massachusetts, Bandon, Oregon, Ottawa Canada – and Warrens, Wisconsin, the location pictured here with Clara Cranberry the Garden Hero. The cranberry bogs are striking in their color. Worth a visit! The name cranberry comes from “craneberry” as early European settlers to the US thought that the cranberry flower looked like a crane. Native Americans were the first to use cranberries as food. In fact, cranberries were part of the original Thanksgiving meals.

Medicinal Benefits

Cranberries have always been recognized for their medicinal value, Native Americans used them to treat wounds. Recent research has found other healthy and nutritious uses. According to Wikipedia, cranberry juice is noted a high molecular weight non-dializable material that prevents tooth decay and may also help prevent kidney stones. Raw cranberries are a source of polyphenol antioxidants that are thought to benefit the cardiovascular system and immune system, and as anti-cancer agents. Cranberry tannins have laboratory evidence for anti-clotting properties and may prevent recurring urinary tract infections in women.

Favorite Foods

As much as 95 percent of cranberries harvested are processed into juice drinks, sauce, and sweetened dried cranberries; while 5 percent are sold fresh to consumers. According to the USDA, the forecast for the 2011 cranberry crop is 7.50 million barrels, up 10 percent from 2010. If realized, this will be the second largest production on record.

You can find recipes in main courses, muffins, snacks, cocktails – you name it, it seems almost anything can be made tastier and healthier with cranberries. You can a range of recipes (including some State Fair winners) on the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association website.

Do you have a cranberry recipe to share? Please send it our way!

Paying it Forward

Posted on November 23, 2011 by in Garden Heroes, Uncategorized

We were thinking about how to celebrate Thanksgiving this year, and the answer came to us from a generous Facebook fan.  Just last week, Robin won a ‘Garden Hero on the Go’ contest.  We’ve been doing this for some time now and love the interaction of our Facebook fans.  We post pictures of our Garden Hero characters in various places around the world, and the fan that guesses the correct location first wins a Garden Hero. This particular response was extra special.

Robin asked if the Garden Hero she had won could be donated to Toys for Tots. We were so impressed by her thoughtfulness that we decided to start a little donation drive of our own.

For every Garden Hero Food Nutrition Kit we sell this holiday season (Regular and Deluxe), Learning ZoneXpress will donate one plush toy to Toys for Tots.  It is an incredible organization that reaches millions of children each year. We hope these fruit and vegetable characters bring a smile to their faces like Robin did to ours.

We will be using our Facebook page to update you all with our progress!

Let’s make this holiday season one to remember!

 

 

Fun, Free Healthy Thanksgiving Quiz

Posted on November 22, 2011 by in Free Downloadable Poster, Special Offers

Looking for a quick activity to keep your students focused on healthy choices over the holidays? Or want an opportunity to talk about food, nutrition and history at the Thanksgiving table? We have a fun Thanksgiving Quiz that we think will help. It’s good for all ages. It promotes healthy eating. It might be fun to give the students the quiz in class and then let them bring it home to share with their families at their Thanksgiving dinners.

You could use it at your own Thanksgiving feast as well to spur discussion at a quiet table or distract attention if the conversation with family gets heated. (Get the quiz and the answers.)

We’ll also be posting questions from the quiz on the Learning ZoneXpress Facebook page (just for fun) if you want to follow along there.

Free Holiday Gift Labels!

Posted on November 18, 2011 by in Garden Heroes, New Products, Special Offers, Uncategorized

Happy Holidays

To: You

From: Learning ZoneXpress

The holiday season wouldn’t be complete without gifts! And gifts certainly aren’t complete without gift tags! Well, LZX has saved you a little bit of work this year by creating these adorable gift labels! They are designed for Avery 5162 labels, but if you don’t have that on hand, you can simply print them out on any 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper! Just cut them out, and tape them on to the gifts of your choice! They are available for free download, so you can print as many as you’d like.

Haven’t found the perfect gift to use the labels on?  Check out our Garden Heroes. Try to pick a favorite out of all 39! It isn’t an easy task, let me tell you. If you find one you like, enter GARDEN11DS at checkout, and we’ll drop the price to $4.00 for you!

 

 

 

You can make a Foodscape too!

Posted on November 16, 2011 by in Foodscapes

Last week we wrote about Foodscapes and the arduous task it is to create Foodscapes for our calendars, cards and posters. It’s hard work, but it’s worth it.

This week we wanted to share some secrets of our success for you crafty DIY types – because you too can create a Foodscape. I know because I’ve done it – and I am not one of a the food professionals or artists on our LZX Team. OK my Foodscape will not be on the cover of our next calendar – but I loved my broccoli sheep. I worked with a couple of kids and we all had a good time trying to recreate some of our favorite characters.

We have created some “recipes” for other ambitious food stylists:

Create Broccoli Sheep

 

Recreate the Porpoise Poster

 

Recreate our Circus Poster

 

Create Your Own Watermelon Hot Air Balloon

As with a recipe, we suggest you have your ingredients present and prepped before you start. Also, don’t be afraid of the glue. Next week we’re hoping to share some edible Foodscape-type recipes – but this week it’s all about looking good!