Home > Kitchen Garden Program > Curriculum Links
To grow, harvest and prepare the food they eat is giving our children a lifelong learning experience not only in acquiring knowledge - they are - but they are also developing values they will carry into other areas of their life. (Classroom Teacher)
How does the Kitchen Garden Program fit into the school curriculum?
The Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) remind us that school programs should support students to develop the capacities to manage themselves, to build good relationships with others, and to make sense of the world in which they live and participate. This world is increasingly global and culturally diverse. More than ever its future is dependent on building mutually responsible and sustainable patterns of living.
In Victoria we speak of linking the interrelated 'strands' of physical, personal and social learning; discipline-based learning and interdisciplinary learning. It is easy to see that all domains of the physical, personal and social learning strand (health and physical education, interpersonal development, personal learning, civics and citizenship) are touched on in the Kitchen Garden Program. Furthermore, children are developing aspects of the interdisciplinary learning strand, in particular their skills of reasoning, creativity, reflection and evaluation. The potential for any school to develop curriculum in the discipline-based learning strand (Arts, English, Languages, Humanities, Mathematics and Science) is substantial. Already activities involve measurement and calculation, understanding properties of heat and steam, learning specific vocabulary and exploring language.
Most importantly, the pleasure gained from growing, harvesting, preparing and sharing will be a life-long pleasure, and will affect how our children live as individuals, and as members of local and global communities.
Incorporating SAKGF and VELS
The Kitchen Garden Program operates on the lines of prevention & early intervention at the primary school level, fitting in with the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) through:
Ownership
Students are involved in the Kitchen Garden design, building and ongoing maintenance.
Physical Activity
Each week students spend at least 45 minutes a week in their garden. They may push a wheelbarrow, tend to compost, dig, rake and plant. They may make a new path, construct a scarecrow, and install garden stakes.
Nutrition & cooking skills
Each week students spend one and a half hours in the kitchen preparing and sharing innovative recipes made from their fresh produce. There is no such thing as a 'bad' food in this program. Pasta with ricotta and silver beet may be followed by a garden salad and an apple and cinnamon cake, or vegetable soup by raspberry muffins, broad bean dip and grilled flatbread by rhubarb crumble. Basic skills are repeated chopping, dressings, stock, dough and become second nature.
Personal & Social Development
Students learn to work co-operatively and to respect each other, the plants and the volunteers. They work in teams and share their meals together around a table. Self esteem, confidence and a sense of achievement are all enhanced through growing, harvesting, preparing and sharing. The students develop the capacities to manage themselves and to make sense of the world in which they live and participate.
Intellectual Development
Activities involve measurement, calculation, understanding properties of heat and steam, learning specific vocabulary and exploring language.
Professional Support
Each Kitchen Garden Program employs a specialised cook and a gardener. The Foundation provides training and professional development support to the participating schools.
Sustainable living
Students learn how to conserve water, recognise a wide range of edible and aromatic plants, harvest at the peak of ripeness and how to control pests at the same time as gardening according to organic principles. They learn about the properties of soil and the relationship between climatic conditions and growth.
So many times have our staff heard parents comment that this Program is the best and most meaningful school program, ever!' (School Principal)
