Blog Post
Cooking from the Garden
June 10, 2022
By: Charlene Sacher
Grade 1/2 Multiage Teacher
General Vanier
It is that time where we are starting to think about what sort of plants we are going to be planting in our school community garden. Last year, my student drew out the garden and read the back of packages to find out about spacing (a great math and literacy activity!), the students this year, benefited from their learning. As I teach grade 1-2 in a multiage classroom, half of my students were part of the planning process in the spring. In the late fall, we harvested all the herbs and vegetables and planned what make with our harvest. We had lots of tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, onions, carrots, and lots of herbs. We also had a small harvest of lettuce, zucchini, and squash.
I had planned some simple cooking methods that I planned on doing with the students… they had a much more adventurous plan. With the produce from the garden, they wanted to make chips. So, we made simple chips that we brushed with oil and added salt -they were an amazing (but very time-consuming) treat!
They also decided making fries and ketchup was a great use of our ingredients. I was worried about this process as I had never made ketchup before, but with a family recipe, adventurous spirits, and hard-working students, we were rewarded with tasty ketchup and crispy fries, straight from our garden!
And of course we shared our food with our friends who had moved onto to grade 3!
