As an experimental and experiential learning classroom that focuses on the relationship between food and life, students harvest ingredients from the garden to create healthy seed-to-table meals. These hands-on activities are connected to curriculum as they simultaneously teach and reinforce healthy eating habits.
Learn While Cooking
The Teaching Kitchen provides students a hands-on opportunity to connect with food. Students cook what they have grown in their grade level plots, learn new recipes, understand the nutritional value of food, and learn the “chemistry” of food preparation and cooking, while reinforcing lessons of nutrition and healthy choices.
Students learn to prepare healthy snacks, meals, and even desserts from scratch so they are empowered with cooking skills and the knowledge to make healthy choices.
Home Economics is a thing of the past, but in the teaching kitchen, students learn to cook with activities linked to core curriculum making learning fun and healthy.
Lessons in the Kitchen
We approach lessons in The Teaching Kitchen in two ways…
- Recipe of the Month — Each month a recipe is created utilizing the harvest of the month. This ensures each student gets the opportunity to make the recipe while teachers link the lesson to their grade level curriculum.
- Curriculum Based — The other approach to kitchen lessons is to develop recipes and kitchen classroom activities linked to grade level curriculum.
Kitchen lessons are ideal activities for having students participate in hands-on learning in a subject area everyone loves — food and cooking. Students learn to cook and feel comfortable in a kitchen environment as they continue to establish these healthy relationships with their food. By providing an environment where students are learning interactively, their knowledge of food is reinforced.
