Kitchen Garden

It was good to be back last week after my break for hip surgery, and luckily the weather has been kind to us both weeks, so we’ve been able to work in the garden.

Last week the Years 3-5's did a great job of cleaning up after the holidays: renewing the straw in the chook shed, weeding the sensory bed and the tripod bed, and planting some Lambs’ Ears in the sensory bed. We then went inside and learnt about the process of photosynthesis and how important plants are to draw down carbon dioxide from the air and then release oxygen back into it.

Years F-2's began the term with a cooking lesson. We made lemon and poppy seed muffins, which were delicious.

This week we swapped over and Years 3-5's were doing the cooking. We harvested some silver beet from our garden and used it to make wontons. We also put in garlic, ginger, spring onions, water chestnuts and coriander, so there was lots of very fine chopping to be done. The students practiced the knife skills of Bear Claw, Bridge and Rock & Chop, along with knife safety. I was most impressed with the very fine cutting skills shown by Sybil, Rocco, Sienna, Travis and Skye in particular. They really took care to get a fine result.

All students stuffed the wonton-wrappers with the filling and performed the fiddly task of folding them to form small dumplings of all shapes! After steaming, we ate them with soy sauce or sweet chilli sauce.

Years F-2 this week made some home-made, non-toxic spray for caterpillars and aphids, using soap flakes and warm water. We then sprayed all our brassicas, which have been attacked by cabbage moth caterpillars.

We then had a look at the amazing, water-repellent properties of nasturtium leaves! The water droplets just sit on them then run off! We made a circle and had a relay, moving a drop of water from person to person around the circle, all the way back to the start, using our nasturtium leaf.

When we came inside we investigated which part of the plant we eat when eating fruit and vegetables. It’s sometimes quite surprising…have a think- are you eating the root, stem, leaves, flower, fruit or seeds of the plant?