Kitchen Garden update
Year 3 & 4 Kitchen – Pasta Party
Over Week 2 to 5 our Year 3 and Year 4 students enjoyed a delicious round of cooking sessions, celebrating Italian flavours with a special Pasta Party.
Students worked together to hand roll cupunti pasta and cut fresh fettuccine, which they paired with two tasty sauces, a classic red tomato and a green vegetable sauce.
Cupunti is a great pasta to make at home because you don’t need any fancy equipment, and the pasta dough only has 3 ingredients.
They also baked golden garlic and rosemary focaccia bread, tossed a SKiPPS grown roasted pumpkin and chickpea salad featuring greens and herbs from our very own kitchen garden, and created a refreshing infused water drink with rosemary, blueberries, and lemon.
The drink is a classic example of a combination of flavours that sound weird but taste great and would be a fabulous refreshing summer drink.
We’d like to give a big thank you to the wonderful parent helpers who joined us in the kitchen. Your support makes these sessions possible. We warmly encourage more families to get involved in future sessions, as the children love sharing their learning with others and it’s a great way to be part of the school community.
The sessions also highlighted the growing skills of our students. Year 4 students further honed their independence, confidently reading and following recipes with less support. Meanwhile, Year 3 students were explicitly taught how to prepare garlic and chop onions, building strong foundations for their cooking journey. Each class finished their session by sitting down together to share the dishes they had created, practising table manners by passing the food around the table, negotiating second servings, and engaging in friendly table conversations.
Year 3 & 4 Garden- Worms and Weeds!
We showed our worm farms some love over the lasty few weeks by learning about how to care for them, preparing a compost feast and building some worm cafes so they can be put directly into our garden beds. Worms are an important part of the ecosystem. They love to eat scraps from plants and soil.
They turn the scraps into nutrients and minerals in their stomach and concentrate them when they poop. This means the nutrients and minerals are easily accessible by plants. Did you know a worm has 5 hearts shaped like arches?
These arches help pump blood through the worm's body – a pretty simple task due to its shape. Worms have been around for longer than the dinosaurs. The oldest record of the existence of worms are fossils estimated to be around 514 million years old!
This is more than double the existence of dinosaurs who were first thought to have existed around 252 million years ago. Unlike dinosaurs, worms have no teeth, so instead they have muscly mouths. They grind the food they eat in their gizzard (their stomach) which they digest and poop out.
You have probably seen lots of weeds growing in the garden. They are useful in attracting pollinators and can also tell us what is happening in the soil. Students have been hunting for edible weeds in the garden and harvested some for our chickens to eat! Sunny, Henrietta, Wendy and Cioccolata enjoy a weed buffet each week.
They love dandelions and wild brassicas. Dandelion means ‘lion’s teeth’, which refers to the lion tooth-like petals. Their tap roots ‘mine’ nutrients from deep in the earth and store them in their roots and leaves. When they die those nutrients are then released into the topsoil for the other plants to use. Dandelions tend to prefer a soil with a higher pH, so they are a good indication of basic soil. Humans can enjoy dandelions too. The young leaves are edible raw or cooked and can be used in salads and pesto. Dandelion roots can be dried, ground up and used as a coffee substitute.
There is always so much to observe and learn in the garden. It's been lovely to see the blossoms come out. Please remind your children that many flowers turn into fruits and vegetables so please let them grow and enjoy with your eyes only. If you have any free time and would like to lend a hand in the garden please get in touch with Allison.
Chantel and Allison
The Kitchen Garden Team