Stephanie Alexander Kitchen & Garden

Children learn best through demonstration, and through trial and error. Finding a way to capture their interest, curiosity and energy by providing hand on learning opportunities. The Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden (SAKG) Program provides a real-life context for learning, with opportunities to be hands on in the areas of growing, harvesting, preparing and sharing fresh, seasonal foods. As participants in the SAKG Program students discover the pleasures of food education, through regular classes in a productive vegetable garden and a kitchen classroom.

The purpose of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation aims to introduce pleasurable food education to children during their learning years, in order to form positive food habits for life. The Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation believe that the recipe for effective food education is:

• Pleasurable food education emphasises the flavours as well as the health benefits of fresh, seasonal, delicious food.
• Dishes cooked reflect the vegetables, herbs and fruits grown, season-by-season, by the children in their organic gardens, and also reflect the Australian Dietary Guidelines.
• Kitchen educators emphasise balance and moderation, and endorse the concept of preparing fruit-based desserts ‘sometimes-only’.
• Pleasurable food education is designed to be fully integrated into the curriculum or learning framework as it offers infinite possibilities to reinforce literacy, numeracy, science, cultural studies and all aspects of environmental sustainability.
• Pleasurable food education delivers observable social benefits to all children, including those with special needs.
• Pleasurable food education encourages critical thinking, teamwork, an understanding of cause and effect, and increased levels of observation.

Read more about the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program on their website here.