Read at : Google Alert – gardening
Positive lessons for kids and parents from the kitchen garden
A kitchen garden offers parents and children more than fresh tomatoes and cucumbers. It can serve as a learning laboratory for positive lessons about food, health and life. That’s the message the Kitchen Garden Foundation, an Australia-based organization, is promoting.
The Kitchen Garden Foundation is a novel program that pairs a kitchen and a garden specialist in the school environment to teach kids, in a pleasurable way, about growing and preparing foods that taste good, smell good and are fun to eat.
Children spend time each week caring for the garden and helping to prepare the foods they grow. In the process they learn about where food comes from, how to prepare fresh foods and about sustainable food systems.
The lessons from the Kitchen Garden Foundation aren’t only for the classroom though. The organization’s philosophy has positive reminders for parents about how to talk with kids and incorporate food into the family value system.
For example, many parents may be sending negative messages to kids about food without realizing it. The Kitchen Garden Foundation stresses that conversations with children about food focus more on the pleasures of food–taste, sight and smell–rather than the dreaded “nutritional benefits.”
The Kitchen Garden Foundation philosophy provides an excellent framework for developing our own home garden effort and involving our children. Here’s their philosophy.
The Kitchen Garden Foundation Philosophy
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Are you familiar with other school garden programs? You can leave a comment or email me at gardeningexaminer@gmail.com.
Robin Wedewer
Think gardening is all sweat, back pain and Latin names? Join Robin as she finds the fun in creating an exuberant garden lifestyle. See Robin’s growing garden at BumblebeeBlog.com or email gardeningexaminer@gmail.com.
CONTAINER GARDENING 