Kitchen Garden 

Weeks 7-10 in the Kitchen…

Over the past four weeks, our cooking and gardening program has been centred around two themes that have engaged our students.In the kitchen, students delved into how produce can be used in both sweet and savoury dishes. Students harvested fennel from the garden and turned it into a delicious pasta sauce. It was interesting to see how many students like liquorice! For our sweet dish, we steamed and puréed beetroot and placed it into a chocolate cake. Although I received many grunts from students when they heard 'beetroot cake', everyone ate and enjoyed the cake, some even forgetting that beetroot was in the recipe. 

For Christmas, we decided to explore some traditional desserts often enjoyed on Christmas Day. Our first creation was a classic gingerbread, with its warm, spiced aroma filling the kitchen and evoking the festive spirit.

We also made a delicious pavlova to take advantage of the bountiful fresh cherries from our school tree, complemented by the freshly laid eggs from our school chickens. This meringue-based dessert was topped with a cherry compote, bursting with a sweet-tart flavour, adding a vibrant touch to our holiday spread.

Parent (and Grandparent) Volunteers

I am grateful to all the incredible volunteers who contributed to the Kitchen and Garden program this year. It has been a pleasure to get to know the families of our students in such a fun environment while cooking delicious meals together.

Class schedules for the upcoming year will be announced in our first newsletter of 2025.

Thank you to everyone who supported our program and helped make it a success. I also want to extend my appreciation to our outstanding staff team; this program would not have been possible without their dedication.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Kitchen Specialist; 

Pia Macris 

Garden News

Its a wrap, our last Kitchen Garden Classes for 2024 have been very busy with lots of fun activities and learnings. Our Year 6ś harvested kilos of fresh cherries and enjoyed tasting a few along the way.

Our Year 2ś then sorted and froze some cherries for later use, again enjoying a taste test or two along the way.

With the humid weather and lots of rain our Kitchen Garden has come alive with lots of bugs.  We enjoyed looking for Gardeners good bugs, like ladybirds, bees and dragonflies and spotted our less desirable gardeners bugs like Cabbage moths and caterpillars.

Our Preps collected materials from our garden to make Stick Christmas Trees, while our Year 3ś & 4s painted some terrocotta pots to brighten up our sitting area.

Its been an amazing and fun year in our Kitchen Garden.  Its taken a lot of people to make our garden space work and evolve into a   a great learning space for our school community.  A big thanks goes out to our dedicated students that help out and school staff that support our program.  A big shout to Miss Pia Macris (Cooking Teacher) & Esther (Garden Teacher) for all their hard work throughout the year.  Well done and thank  you.

Look forward to seeing you all in 2025.

Enjoy your time with Family & Friends.

Merry Christmas & Happy Summer Gardening

Sandy