Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden
Bianca Tondo
Garden Specialist
The weather now has truly turned cold!
The most requested activity in the garden is to interact with the chickens. During one of the Year 4 classes, our new, very inquisitive chickens decided to take a walk around the school. One of our girls walked down to the Prep area and another walked into a Year 3 classroom! We decided that we will need to keep a closer eye on girls in the future!
Students work very hard in the garden in a variety of tasks – cleaning the chicken coop, weeding, planting, turning over soil, and harvesting. EVERYTHING from the gardens around the school is either used in the kitchen or sold to the community so EVERYONE has an opportunity to purchase the produce. The sale of the produce goes back into looking after our hens. Please do not pick the fruit and vegetables yourself – think of the community and the students who will be disappointed not to be able to harvest themselves.
I can also assure you that our hens are always very well fed. They have a constant supply of grain in the bin in the middle of the pen. I know they appear to be hungry all the time, but I do ask if you can refrain from picking vegetables and flowers, etc and feeding them to the hens.
Reflections from Garden Students
4B
Today we threw hay into the chicken coop. It was fun because it was something I have never done before and it was fascinating. I liked picking the mandarins because you don’t get to do it every day. I liked the weeding because I got to do it with my friend. Weeding was simple and boring but I also had to use my brain to figure out which were weeds and which were not.
Year 5
Today in the garden it was fun because we were able to let out the chickens and watched them run around like crazy. It was also good when I got to weed and put things in the compost bin. At the end of all the jobs, we were fulfilled, and the garden is now looking cleaner than ever. Everyone helped and used a variety of habits of mind – persisting, taking reasonable risks, and striving for accuracy.
Today in the garden we were picking out the weeds to help the garden beds. We were picking up the chickens out of the garden beds.
We enjoyed working with the chickens and cleaning out the chicken coop. We used the Habit of Mind, "taking a responsible risk", when cleaning out the chicken coop.
It is exciting that we got to pat the chickens and use the hose and tools today. The Habit of Mind we used was "wonderment and awe" when holding the chickens.
THANK YOU!
At Kingswood, one of our values is that we thrive in a team culture and that we are connected to our community. On Tuesday, we hosted a morning tea for all our volunteers who help us out in the SAKG program. The program cannot run without volunteers. Hosting the morning tea is our way of saying thank you for all the time, support and effort that our volunteers give us every week. We couldn’t do it without your support!
We hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday and we look forward to seeing everyone in Term 3.
Happy Gardening!