Stephanie alexander kitchen garden

Middleton Public School is a Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden (SAKG) school delivering pleasurable food education to Stage 2 students (Year 3 and 4) every week. This program has been running since 2013. There are over 1000 SAKG schools across Australia.

It is a fun, hands-on approach to teaching children about fresh, seasonal, delicious food. Children form healthy food habits for life.

In the garden, students grow and harvest and then in the kitchen prepare and share delicious dishes they from the fresh vegetables, herbs and fruit they have grown.

Gardening and cooking is a whole new way for students to learn. The core subjects of Mathematics, English and Science are integrated in to the kitchen garden experience.

The philosophy of the Garden Program, as described on the Kitchen Garden Program website:

The fundamental philosophy that underpins the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program is that by setting good examples and engaging children's curiosity, as well as their energy and their taste buds, we can provide positive and memorable food experiences that will form the basis of positive lifelong eating habits.

Visit the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program site to learn more about our philosophy.

The garden

The Harvest Table

The Harvest Table

The Harvest Table is at the centre of the Kitchen Garden Program.

All the fresh produce harvested from the school garden is placed on the Harvest Table ready for use in the delicious dishes the students create once a fortnight in the Kitchen Program.

Students working in the garden

Students work together to keep the garden growing.

Tending the garden is a central part of the Kitchen Garden Program. From this, students learn about:

teamwork
soil conditions/mulching
the light and water the different plants require
seasonal planting
companion panting
natural pesticides
worm farming
weeding
harvesting.

Harvesting the vegetables

Harvesting our school grown vegetables is one of the most exciting parts of the Kitchen Garden Program.

Our Harvest Table is where we display the fresh produce grown by the students in our school's Kitchen Garden.

Some of the vegetables we have grown in the past include:

snow peas
squash
tomatoes
capsicum
pumpkin
parsley
lemons
eggplant
leafy greens
beetroot.

Watering our garden

Harvesting in the garden

Students trying the carrots that have been grown

Our garden

The kitchen program

Our kitchen

Staff source the very best recipes to utilise the fresh produce we have growing in our school garden each week.

Each recipe is selected according to the level of difficulty and specific cooking techniques involved, suitable to the infants and primary cooking groups accessing this program once a week.

Staff of the small groups, instruct the students and help them interpret and follow the recipes.

This wonderful program is highly successful at our school.

Students cooking in the kitchen

Not only do the students learn how to cook delicious dishes from lovely fresh produce, they are also learning many fundamental literacy and numeracy and vital life skills.

Some of the skills we focus on in the Kitchen Garden program are: