– a food skills project –
Cooking Matters is THE food skills project for school kids (6 – 14yrs).
This hands-on educational school garden- and cooking programme empowers the school kids to strengthen their sense of sustainability by teaching them the importance of growing, harvesting and cooking their own produce – independently!
By doing so the overal knowledge of fresh and local produce increases amongst the youth, and their basic cooking skills will improve and this will strengthen their sense of independence self sufficiency. The customised step-by-step instruction cards assist in developing the reading and mathematical skills as well as the fine motor skills and other manual skills, this plays a particular importnat role in the special needs groups (IQ 70-79).
Cooking Matters empowers the students to develop their basic gardening and cooking skills.
Cooking Matters takes place on the school grounds, providing there will be enough space for the raised beds or alternatively a greenhouse, and an equipped kitchen.
During the project, the students will explore a variety of seed sowing techniques, plant care techniques and even some eco-friendly ways to keep the nasty bugs at bay.
Following the customised step-by-step instruction cards the kids will spend some time in the kitchen (supervised) to cook their own snack like peanut butter, frozen mock mojito, or explore flavour bursting herbs grown locally.
A project like this would typically be enjoyed by a class of 25+ students and their teachers and assistants. Over a 4 months period, the school garden will be cared for by the kids and hopefully grow into a beautiful school garden. The result will hopefully be a great harvested yield of locally grown tomatoes, eggplants, peanuts, green peppers and radishes, and lots of fragrant herbs for tea and flavourful herb butter.