Pete Moye’
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Children at the Cerritos College Child Development Center will soon be making smoothies, desserts and snacks from fruit they grew in their playground.

Four blueberry bushes and nine fruit tree saplings, some with fruit dangling off the branches, arrived Aug. 16, after the center was selected for the 2011 Jamba Juice It’s All About the Fruit award, which was given by the National Gardening Association and Jamba Juice.

The prize comes with a $500 grant that sponsors the construction of a fruit tree garden at the care center.

“Apples, plums, lemons, oranges, apples, blueberries, bananas–we get to eat them,” 4-year-old Tatum Mora said, who has an orange tree at home.

With the help of the staff, the 2-to-5-year-old children who attend the care center planned the project, will care for the garden and eat the fruit they grow.

Debra S. Ward, director of the Child Development Center, said, “Our purpose was not only for the education but also to teach children about healthy eating habits.

“When the fruits are ready and we can harvest them, the plan is to use them in our snacks, our breakfast and our lunches and also for the opportunity for children to cook with the various fruits and make different meals out of them.”

Ward also intends for the children to take the nutritional knowledge they learn from the project back home to share with their families.

Since receiving the grant in June, the children have been researching seeds, fruit trees and growing procedures.

They also surveyed each other and the staff members to determine what fruits would be most favored among the development center and drew bar graphs of the results.

The children organized everything except the grant writing, according to Diana Echeverria, a teacher for the center.

“They’re learning a lot of math, they’re learning cooperative play with one another and it’s allowed them to be very curious to engage in such an experience for a long period of time and want to be apart of it,” Echeverria said.

There is no specific date when the garden will be finished but they plan to plant the trees in September.

The center was among the 20 winners given the grant from a nation-wide pool of more than 500 applicants.

According to Julie Parker-Dickerson, education program coordinator, National Gardening Association in South Burlington, Vt., her organization has been awarding grants to schools and community garden programs for more than 35 years.

“We believe that teaching children about gardening not only empowers the next generation to be able to grow their own food, it also gives children an opportunity to better connect with nature and it’s communities,” Parker-Dickerson said.

“Gardening enables children to engage in studies across the curriculum through hands-on experiences.

“Even the youngest students can gain from the experience of watching a seed sprout, learning to care for another living thing, develop some vocabulary to describe what is occurring, and perhaps enjoy a fruit or vegetable they grew themselves,” Parker-Dickerson said.