S A K Garden

Liz Scott- Stephanie Alexander Garden Specialist

On Wednesday 13th February, we held a SAKG Professional Development Day at Kingswood Primary School. Our visit from the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation representatives was very successful. It was a day where we were able to showcase our school community program to 20 educators from various schools across Victoria. We attended workshops in both the garden and the kitchen. Sonia and I were inspired by the PD and have come away with many new ideas for our students.

Garden classes have begun, we have learnt about the tools we will use, safety in the garden, and a walk through the patch to see what we have growing.

We continue to harvest zucchini, salad leaves, cucumber and tomatoes. The children are learning to count and weigh the eggs, and the vegetables they are harvesting. We harvested 24 beans and they weighed 600grams. Currently beans are selling at $9.99kg therefore our beans would have cost us $6.00 at the shops.

We have hung old tomato plants in the shed to show the children how the light, warmth and the energy from the plant continue to ripen the fruit.  I just love the way children interpret the process, Ryiin had obviously been thinking about the colour change and referred to the change like traffic lights. I must have looked a little puzzled, she looked at me and proceeded to tell me how. They start out green, then turn orange, then they're red. WOW! So descriptive.

Along with bringing numeracy into the garden, we are also offering opportunities to extend on literacy. We are providing a variety of books and magazines for the children to access when they have completed tasks or to look up and identify a particular fruit/vegetable that we have growing. We also have a fabulous bug book so if a bug is found, they can look it up and learn all about it. Its experiences like this can lead to some wonderful tales told.