Staff Writer

Although Lake Nona’s “medical city” skyline is materializing in Orange County, partnerships are solidifying between Osceola County organizations and one of the medical facilities under construction.

The new Nemours Children’s Hospital is collaborating with The Harmony Institute to study the impact that nature, animals and gardens have on the overall well being of children’s health.

The Harmony Institute, located in the community of Harmony, east of St. Cloud, uses classroom instruction after-school at Harmony Community School and hands-on activities at Spirit Farm to increase awareness about healthy eating and lifestyles.

They discuss nutrition, exercise and health in Lisa Boyles’ first-grade classroom but the 11 children in the program range from fourth- to eighth- graders. The program has room for 25 students.

The youngsters also get healthy snacks, such as fruit, vegetables or air-popped popcorn, while focusing on serving size or making healthy food choices.

“Some of the kids already do these things but some don’t. Some students said their parents don’t buy fresh fruits and vegetables,” Boyles, the program’s school liaison, said.

The children are then bused to Spirit Farm, located behind Harmony High School, where they feed horses, donkeys and chickens as well as tend to a large vegetable and herb garden they helped plant that is now filled with tomatoes, collards and bell peppers.

“It’s amazing what kids don’t know about nature. I think all kids (these days) are less inclined to be outside,” Stephanie Carey, communications coordinator for the Harmony Institute, said.

Lexi Coiner, 12, is in seventh grade at Narcoossee Middle School and plays soccer and participates in track and ice-skating. While she has been around farming before — she is from Ohio — she enjoys going to Spirit Farm as well as using the information she learns in the program.

“I’m into healthier stuff. I’ve been chubbier and I lost a lot of weight when I got healthier,” she said.

Nemours created the curriculum that, according to program director and pediatrician Lloyd Werk, is comprised of three parts: nutritional education, active childhoods and cultivating an appreciation for nature.

“If we can go into a community and prevent illness, that’s going to have the biggest bang for the buck,” Werk said. “Spirit Farm gives them a better appreciation for where their food comes from and what they can do to bring a healthy lifestyle home. It’s so much more powerful to teach someone else to fish.”

Last year, Werk and his team ran the program at Harmony; this year they are supervising and next year, the Harmony team will be on its own to implement the program. Nemours will evaluate the program.

“What we hope to achieve at the end is any school can take the curriculum and implement it at their site and come to Spirit Farm,” Boyles said.

Werk said the program is a three-step process in immersing Nemours into the community. Step one is forming the initial partnership; then the program transitions to a more homegrown team and lastly, the program moves completely to the community. They are currently working to include more local schools in the program.

Nemours also has formed partnerships with the Osceola County School District and the Early Learning Coalition of Osceola County to screen pre-kindergarten students for dyslexia, a learning disability that impedes reading.

The program – Nemours BrightStart! – targets children with specific difficulties such as not recognizing letters of the alphabet. Children with these difficulties take a 10-minute test, which will gauge their reading readiness. The children who score below a certain percentage attend a nine-week class designed to help them overcome their learning challenges and learn to read.

According to Nemours, the majority of children with dyslexia go undiagnosed until third grade and their program helps identify the problem before the children begin to have trouble in school.

Nearly 700 children were screened last year and 31 percent, or 210, qualified for the program, according to Carol Quick, coordinator of early childhood and extended day for the School District.

“We’re really able to close the gap between the children who were at risk and the typically developing children,” Quick said.

Nemours created the curriculum and is currently monitoring the program. The children’s hospital plans to track these students into kindergarten and has the capability to track the students longer into their academic careers.

Quick works to provide the program to public school students and the Early Learning Coalition offers it in private childcare centers.

“We’re trying to get into every public school (voluntary pre-kindergarten) classroom with this service this year,” Quick said.

There are 740 students in 26 VPK classrooms in Osceola County, according to Quick.

Non-native English speakers and children from lower socio-economic families tend to score in the qualifying range but Quick points out the children who have graduated from the nine-week course are more confident and participate more in class.

“We’ve found this to be a remarkable program in helping children who may be at risk and helping them make significant gains in a short period,” she said.

David Lane, president of the St. Cloud Greater Osceola Chamber of Commerce, said other partnerships are in the works but declined to divulge the details at this time.