Garden to table and everything in between

Eleanor Burns, Kitchen Garden Program Co-ordinator, and Freya, Year 3 student

Year 3 students play an integral role in the ecosystem of Junior School Kew. From the beginning of the year, the students start collecting food scraps from classrooms and the staffroom to fertilise their produce garden along the side of the Fairview Building. They nurture the soil and plant seeds which will eventually become the food they learn to cook with. The entire year is underpinned by a focus on recycling, learning about environmental sustainability and discovering how to have a positive impact on the planet.

The Year 3 program is an important step in shaping environmentally conscious and culinarily capable young people who understand the life cycle of food and waste and the necessity for our community to take responsibility for our planet. Current Year 3 student Freya and Co-ordinator of the Kitchen Garden Program, Eleanor Burns, explain more.

What have we been doing in Year 3?

This year, we have been learning about sustainability. In Term 1, we went to CERES Environmental Park. While we were there, we learnt a song called ‘The six Rs’ (reduce, reuse, recycle, respect, replenish and refuse). We also learnt how to compost, made recycled paper and picked up rubbish at the Yarra River. It was lots of fun. There was even a big, recycled playground!

This year we have also been doing our gardening program. Miss T shows us instructional videos and tells us about plants. We put on our art smocks to protect our clothes and then plant seedlings in the garden.

The Year 3s collect all the food scraps from all the Junior School classrooms and the staffroom and place them in the big compost bins in the Year 3 garden so the scraps can decompose. The compost makes the soil healthier. It also means that less food scraps end up in the general waste and landfill.

The Year 3s used to collect the paper bins from the classrooms and the staffroom, then place the paper in the big paper bin near reception, but now we have encouraged the classrooms to do their own paper recycling. We still help the Preps because they are too little to carry the heavy bins.

In Term 3 we went on an excursion to Replas Recycled Plastics Products Company. We did activities like colouring, sorting and Jenga to learn about recycling. Replas makes lots of benches and gym equipment out of recycled plastic. We got to play on the recycled gym equipment. We learned that some balloons never decompose so we should recycle them. We saw sad photos of sea life that had eaten lots of plastic and died.

I would like it if you learnt more about recycling and shared it with your family and friends!

– Freya, Year 3

From the garden to the table

Plant, nurture, harvest, cook, eat, repeat. Through this cycle, our Year 3 students learn to understand the interconnectedness of where their food comes from, how food waste is composted and how to handle the produce in the kitchen. During their regular time in our kitchen garden, they learn about healthy soils and sustainable and regenerative food production. They not only learn theoretically but through hands-on preparation and maintenance of an organic garden. On the morning of their cooking session, they relish the opportunity to harvest the fruit and vegetables they have grown alongside their classmates.

In the kitchen, students make a variety of sweet and savoury dishes from the morning harvest. We develop a heightened awareness of food through the sensory nuances of taste, smell and texture. At the end of each cooking lesson, students and parent helpers come together to share the meal they have prepared. Students are regularly challenged to try unfamiliar foods and many share their new found love of cooking with their families. We aim to develop positive relationships with nutritious food and long-lasting knowledge about how sustainable practices can reduce our impact on the earth.

From a personal point of view, I never stop feeling joy when I see the students’ faces on their cooking day. They collaborate beautifully, sharing the ‘fun’ jobs such as using a mezzaluna to chop an assortment of herbs or taking pride in cracking the eggs without any shell pieces falling in the mixture. I see their curiosity, their willingness to be brave with flavours and their excitement to share knowledge, wondering about the earth and worms and bees. These are formative experiences, which we don’t take for granted.

– Eleanor Burns Kitchen Garden Program Co-ordinator