Thursday 24 November 2011

What is the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program?

We have recently been successful in receiving a grant to establish a Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program at Southern Support School.
The aim of the Kitchen Garden program is to pleasurably engage and educate young people in growing, harvesting, preparing and sharing delicious and healthy food in the belief that these skills and understandings are essential to the development of life-long joyful and healthy eating habits.
Melbourne chef and food writer Stephanie Alexander established the Kitchen Garden Foundation in 2004 to help give as many young people access to the program as possible.To quote Stephanie “First and foremost, we want to enchant and engage the children. Children are unimpressed by lists or pyramids that separate the ‘good for you’ from the ‘not good for you’ foods. But get them digging and planting and picking, or get them mixing or rolling or chopping, or get them around a table with their own freshly baked pizza topped with their own tomato sauce, liberally scattered with herbs from the garden, and the result is enthusiasm, real learning and great flavours”.
The Program will be fully integrated into our school curriculum as it offers infinite possibilities to reinforce literacy, numeracy, science, cultural studies and all aspects of environmental sustainability.
We plan to start implementing the program in early 2012, initially using existing class vegetable beds, and our newly renovated kitchen. It is envisaged that the full program will be up and running by mid 2013.
More information about the program can be found at http://www.stephaniealexander.com.au/.

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