By NICOLE VALICEK
STUDENTS from the Altona Green Primary School in Altona Meadows are part of a food revolution that is teaching them important lessons from the ground up.
For the past six years the students at the school have been getting their hands dirty and learning how to grow, harvest, prepare and share fresh seasonal food.
The school was one of the first in the west to adopt the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program that has brought the benefits of food education to the classroom.
The schools kitchen/garden specialist Carolina Cordeiro said the program was a great way to help the students understand food and how to develop healthier eating habits.
“The whole program came about because of a concern for childhood health,” she said.
“When they get older and they’ve got this experience behind them I think it will help them to make better food choices.”
The students are involved in every part of the school’s ever-expanding garden that currently includes rhubarb, broccoli lettuce, beetroot and cabbage.
They grow each plant from a seed, make the compost in the garden to fertilise the soil and harvest all of the vegetables and take them to an on-site kitchen to make nutritious and delicious meals.
“(We want to) get this idea across that food can be healthy and delicious and it can be a social thing that you sit down and eat with your friends.”
As participants in the Kitchen Garden Program students from every year level spend structured time in a productive veggie garden and home-style kitchen as part of their everyday school experience.
“They’ve responded well having the responsibility of producing their own lunches a couple of times a week and they’ve had an opportunity to try food they’re sometimes reluctant to eat.”
Ms Cordeiro said the garden is always evolving with the recent arrival of chickens at the end of last year.
“We’re trying to make the school beautiful and productive at the same time so kids have more and more of their own things to eat.”
