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About the Program
Aims and philosophy
The aim of the Kitchen Garden Program is pleasurable food education for young children. The underlying belief is that by introducing this holistic approach we have a chance to positively influence children’s food choices in ways that have not been tried before.
A Kitchen Garden is a garden created to provide edible, aromatic and beautiful resources for a kitchen. The creation and care of a Kitchen Garden teaches us about the natural world, about its beauty and how to care for it, how best to use the resources we have and develop an appreciation of the wide range of possibilities for both the cook and the gardener. There are four major components to the program: Growing, Harvesting, Preparing, Sharing.
Our philosophy
It is up to the individual specialists to decide how to organise and present their classes. Above all the classes are to be enjoyable.
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How it works
In the Kitchen Garden Program children across Years 3 to 6 spend a minimum of 40 minutes a week in an extensive vegetable garden which they have helped design, build and maintain on the school grounds according to organic gardening principles. They also spend one and a half hours each week in a kitchen classroom preparing and sharing a wonderful variety of meals created from their produce. The project employs two part-time specialist staff; a gardener and a cook, to run these sessions. The Program works best when the two specialist areas - the kitchen and the garden - work in partnership with each other, so that these elements form a harmonious cycle.
There are two unique factors about the Kitchen Garden Program. The first is the intrinsic link between the garden, the kitchen and the table. The emphasis is on learning about food and about eating it. No part of the Program can exist without the other. The second is the project is embedded in the curriculum. It is a compulsory part of the school's program for four years of a child's life.
Staffing the Program
In both the kitchen and the garden the children work in small groups with the support of a volunteer under the supervision of the specialist staff and the classroom teacher (the average class sizes range from 20 to 25 students; there are usually 4 – 5 volunteers per class).
The garden specialist has overall responsibility for the planning and maintenance of the garden, and also plans and conducts weekly garden classes in which students learn about growing produce for a kitchen (amongst many other things!).
The kitchen specialist plans menus that can be cooked by the children, based on foods that have been grown and harvested in the garden.
Beyond their specialist garden and kitchen knowledge, skills are required in planning, budgeting, supervision of children, creative class planning and management of a team of volunteers. There is no set curriculum. The book Kitchen Garden Cooking with Kids gives further details of the weekly tasks, as well as lists of garden activities and seasonal menus and is available for order through the shop.
Some schools have appointed teachers already on staff to the position of kitchen or garden specialist and although this allows the specialist to take the class without the presence of the classroom teacher, in most schools the classroom teachers are enjoying accompanying their classes to the kitchen and garden and developing an integrated curriculum.
There is a significant amount of ‘physical’ preparation required in both the kitchen and the garden. In the kitchen the specialists need to purchase ingredients, portion them as necessary, pre-make some doughs, stocks and different aspects of dishes in order for menus to be completed in the allotted time. In order to maintain a clean, hygienic learning space they inevitably do a certain amount of cleaning up at the end of each day. In addition they are researching appropriate recipes in order to create a menu plan, prepare class handouts and brief volunteers. The outcome of reduced planning time in the kitchen is a watered down Program through simplified menus – ultimately the long-term effect is diminished. Similarly, the garden is the ‘equipment’ that the Program will need in top condition for the effective delivery of kitchen and garden classes. Some garden planning and maintenance time should also be factored in.
The kitchen and garden specialists work closely together, along with a Program Coordinator from the teaching staff, to plan garden activities, menus and an integrated curriculum around the garden’s seasonal growing cycle. In many instances the specialists are not qualified teachers, and the Program Coordinator is a great help in inducting the specialists into the life of the school. The Program Coordinator supervises the specialists, connects them with the classroom teaching staff, sorts out timetabling issues, nurtures the development of the integrated curriculum and assists with volunteer coordination for the classes.
Attracting volunteers from the community is critical to the Program’s success. Volunteers typically commit to a regular weekly timeslot.
Program Costs
Establishing the garden and kitchen requires community effort. Once in place, and the garden is producing most of the food for the kitchen, the recurrent costs are for the part-time, specialist staff, supplementary produce for the kitchen, dry goods, kitchen maintenance, cleaning, utilities, garden supplies such as seeds, seedlings and replacement equipment, and garden maintenance. There is enormous scope for community support of these costs through donations in kind.
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View podcasts of the Program in action at Collingwood College, incorporated in the Rich Picture Case Study prepared for the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development's Knowledge Bank.
A day in the Kitchen Garden
Growing
Working in the garden means finding out the very best ways to grow food. We also work out ways to save water, to use up scraps from the kitchen, to enjoy being out in the sunshine, and how to look after all the plants in our garden. We now know that worms are a garden's best friends and that snails don't like climbing over eggshells!
Harvesting
We pick many different vegetables and herbs and even flowers to use in the kitchen. This year we have grown broccoli, climbing beans, cauliflowers, cabbages, silverbeet, rhubarb, fennel, potatoes, zucchini and many others. Some foods take a long time to be ready to eat but when the weather is warm the leafy salads grow very fast. The broad bean plants are so tall - just like Jack-in-the Beanstalk. The basil plants smelt beautiful all summer and we used the leaves on tomato salads.
Preparing
Being in the kitchen is great fun and every week the menu is different. We use as much as we can from the garden. Rolling pasta is very popular and everyone has now had a turn. We can make stuffings for ravioli using greens from the garden and ricotta cheese. We can also roll pastry for vegetable pies and calzone, we can make fritters, and muffins and pizza, and many different salads and risotto, and in the winter everyone loved making soup. Most of us have now tried new foods, and we all think of good words to describe these flavours and textures. The new words are hung on our language tree.
Sharing
Eating the food is the very best part of being in the kitchen. There is a warm and cosy feeling in the room and the room goes really quiet as we taste how good everything tastes. Each group arranges their dish on platters so that every table has at least four different dishes every week. The platters of food look beautiful and there is hardly ever anything leftover and everyone feels really proud of their work. It is important to learn to pass the platters and the water to each other and to understand about sharing everything. The tables look pretty with herbs and flowers in little vases.
Read about how the first Kitchen Garden Program was established at Collingwood College, plus 120 recipes in Kitchen Garden Cooking with Kids, available for order through the shop.
Evaluation of the Kitchen Garden Program
An evaluation of the Kitchen Garden Program is currently being undertaken by a joint research team from the Faculty of Health, Medicine, Nursing & Behavioural Sciences at Deakin University and The McCaughey Centre: Vichealth Centre for the Promotion of Mental Health and Community Wellbeing, University of Melbourne and will be completed in 2009.
