Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation
Rangeview Pre-School is an active member of the Kitchen Garden Classroom. We belong to a unique community of learning centres and schools committed to delivering pleasurable food education based on the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation philosophy.
“The purpose of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation is to introduce pleasurable food education to children during their learning years, in order to form positive food habits for life.” (SAKGF)
Our children are getting their hands dirty and learning how to grow, harvest, prepare and share seasonal food. We are supporting children to develop knowledge and understanding of food and the important role it plays in our physical and social wellbeing, as well as planting the seeds for positive eating habits and enjoyment of food.
Our garden area has begun small and is gradually growing as our skills, knowledge and understandings of the SAKGF philosophy builds. We are utilising what we have at hand and what has been donated to us by our community members. Our children have enjoyed learning and experiencing growing their own plants and using these in our cooking experiences at kinder or taking home seedlings to grow at home.
Our backyard development sub-committee is supporting the growth of our kitchen garden and improvements in this area are continuing. As an important aspect of developing a connection to our garden environment and our country we have begun to incorporate Australian native foods into our back yard spaces to be used in our cooking experiences.
We are learning so much and having a lot of fun.
Don’t Throw It Away
Many items we use for craft are quite expensive to buy. The materials which are thrown away by yourself or the business you may be connected with are often of use at pre-school. We welcome any assistance in the supply of the materials listed below:
- Plain or coloured paper or cardboard (not too small)
- Boxes – cereal, toothpaste, dried fruit etc – not detergent or soap, or anything containing nuts or nut products.
- Cardboard cylinders
- Thread – string, wool
- Soft wood for carpentry
- Wood off-cuts
- Buttons
- Corks
- Ribbon
- Hessian
- Nails – all sizes
- Cards – birthday and Christmas
- Cotton wool
- Foam food trays (consider food contents and avoid potential high allergy foods)
- Scrap paper
- Seeds
- Tinsel
- Cones from inside knitting wool
- Paper doilies
- Natural materials (leaves, sticks, gumnuts etc)
For health and safety reason, no toilet rolls or egg cartons please. Additionally we can use old keyboards, laptops, small radios or machines such as printers for the children to take apart, which is a great and popular activity for fine motor skills and strength. If you have anything else that you think may be useful, please ask us – we can usually find a use for most things!