Showing posts with label Kitchen Garden Bus Tour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kitchen Garden Bus Tour. Show all posts

Friday, November 25, 2011

News from the 'Garden Buds'

The 'Garden Buds' from St John's Primary, Riverstone, plus some of their classmates, enjoyed their second 'Kitchen Garden Bus Tour' on Monday 14 November and visited four Kitchen Garden schools in the Parramatta Diocese, to meet students who share their love of learning by doing!
At St Patrick's Primary Blacktown, students investigated the 'no-dig' garden process, at St Andrew's Primary Marayong, notes were taken on how to grow delicious strawberries and at St Francis of Assisi Primary Glendenning the value of watering plants was experienced first hand!
The animals were a talking point at St Michael's Primary Blacktown South, where the Nagle College agricultural students gave tips on animal care and diet! Nano Cottage provided respite from the heat as the temperature rose to nearly 40 degrees but this didn't deter the students from stirring the compost!






St John's Primary Riverstone
The garden buds: establishment of vegetable and bushtucker gardens

The 'Garden Buds' program is designed to establish a vegetable garden and a bush tucker trail amongst an already extensive native planting on school grounds to complement our semi-rural environment. This project will help to develop and extend the oral language skills of our students as they interact and communicate with others and develop their public speaking skills when presenting information about the garden buds program. This program is supported within the framework of our Catholic ethos as students come to learn and appreciate God's creation. It will allow us to further our recycling practices with the inclusion of worm farms and composting of food waste as well as demonstrate garden to kitchen links with a menu featuring fresh 'home-grown' produce in our parent-run 'Snack Shack' initiative and provide a source of income to feed back to the program with excess produce being sold to school families and friends.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Kitchen Garden Bus Tour!

The 'Garden Buds' from St John's Primary Riverstone, boarded the Nagle College Blacktown South bus, on 1 August (Horses' Birthday and Wattle Day) for a Kitchen Garden tour of four schools in the local area. General consensus was that it was 'one of the best days ever' and the students hope the tour becomes a regular event!

First stop St Francis of Assisi Primary Glendenning where students were served warm mini pizzas by the cooking group and mingled with the Language Group students!





At St Andrew's Primary Marayong the students wandered through the herb garden, the strawberry patch and met two attractive scarecrows! Using old filing cabinets as garden beds, was put on the 'Creative Ideas' list!




Garden gnomes, mirrors, no-dig gardens, and Rose Cottage were added to the list of good ideas, at St Patrick's Primary Blacktown and students were each given a packet of seeds for their school or home garden!

Last stop was Nano Cottage Kitchen Garden at St Michael's Primary Blacktown South, where students enjoyed their lunch, helped to water the garden, stir the compost and spent time getting to know Butterscotch and Nugget, the Nagle Farm calves!


Time to return to school with some nasturtiums to plant and stories to tell!