Final Outreach - Salem Public School

We’re sad to say today was our final wrap-up outreach event at Salem Public School in Elora. We had the pleasure of joining two classes for our fun-packed nutrition workshops. We started off the morning in Ms. Carolyn Alexander’s grade 2/3 class. We were pleased to learn the children were very knowledgeable about Canada’s Food Guide and the Balanced Plate model. This allowed us to jump right into drawing the their own balanced plate which everyone had a lot of fun with! We found some pretty obscure plates containing combinations of lots of cucumbers, oranges, chicken, almond milk, peanut butter and crackers. 

Rebecca then lead a talk about local foods and what it means to eat local. We got some great answers about what foods aren’t local and the children came to the conclusion that tropical fruits usually aren’t local. It was great to learn that almost all of the children had a garden at home they helped their parents with. Our final activity was fruit and vegetable yoga, which is always a hit with the children. We learn to “be” the banana, peel the banana and be a growing carrot sprouting out of the ground. This is a great outlook for the children to get all their sillies out before their next class.  

At around 9:40am we moved to Kathleen Mcirr’s grade 1 class. It was a nice slowing of pace, working more closely with Canada’s Food Guide and what foods fit in each of the 5 categories. It was a great learning activity to show the children pictures of foods and help them work through which category they would fit in. The children were very excited to create their own balanced plate, which they could keep and take home. Before we had to leave, we created healthy eating pledges on small cut out leaves, which we taped on a tree. This created a growing tree of pledges for the children to make a pledge to themselves about eating healthier. We finished again with fruit and vegetable yoga and everything was wrapped up by about 11:00am.

We’re sad and excited to be wrapping up Garden 2 Table for this year. We know we’ve learned a lot over this year and hope we’ve made a difference to the youth in the community.  We have felt very fortunate to work with so many enthusiastic children in the garden, the cooking lab and in the community. Thanks to everyone who has supported us and followed our blog over the past two semesters!

Rickson Ridge Outreach Day Grade 1/2

So we’ve been out of the picture for a while with the cold weather and Christmas break, but we’re back out in the city starting our outreach events!

This past Friday we were at Rickson Ridge Elementary School doing two nutrition workshops with some awesome children. In the morning, we were in Ms. Cloutier’s grade 1/2 class and after the nutrition break we went to Ms. McKenzie’s grade 1 class. The children were all very excited for our visit, possibly due to all the educational games we brought in! We started by talking about what healthy eating means and discussing Canada’s Food Guide.  Then we used the balanced plate model to engage the children in an activity of drawing to create their own balanced plate with favourite foods. Rebecca then created a talking circle to teach the children about local food and sustainability. This was a new topic for many of children and they were very interested about what food were local and which weren’t. This led us into a game of vegetable and fruit bingo, and when each food was called out the children answered whether the item was local.  The children were all very knowledgeable when we discussed energy dense versus empty food and played a game of  “Go, Slow, Woah.”  

To finish off our morning of fun, we had a series of four stations for the children to rotate though in groups and receive a puzzle piece to complete at the end of the stations. Station one was riddles with Rachael, solving some fun riddles related to different vegetable and fruit. Station three was spirit vegetable with Lindsay and myself, discussing if you were a vegetable, which one would you be? We had some pretty awesome answers such as: “A pea on a pod, because they’re just hanging out, like me and my friends!”  Then they were able to get their energy out at the vegetable/fruit yoga station with Steph getting creative with poses such as banana, peel the banana and banana split! The final station was creating a pledge about healthy eating on a leaf, which we then taped to a tree to create a growing tree of healthy eating goals!

Overall, the day was a huge success with everyone getting involved with engaging games and learning at the same time! One of the students learned that peanut butter could be in the middle of the other and meat and alternative food group. I know our team did some learning as well, we were surprised by how knowledge the group of students was! We can’t wait for our next outreach event!

Big Brothers Big Sisters at PJs

We had our first outreach event this Saturday in PJ’s Restaurant on campus! We paired up with the Big Brothers/Big Sisters group in Guelph for an afternoon filled with lots of cooking, eating and learning! There was a group of 5 “Bigs” and 5 “Littles” who arrived at 10am. We started by going through a tour of what a professional kitchen looks like and how things run. After a short presentation on hand washing and safe knife skills, we broke off into two teams to start working through a jam-packed list of recipes. 

Everyone started out by making the rosemary focaccia bread- the famous recipe of PJ’s restaurant. We talked about how yeast is actually alive, and that’s what makes the bread rise. While the focaccia dough was rising in the proofer, we got started on creating the homemade sauce for the vegetable lasagne. It was learning experience for most the group in learning to use a scale to measure ingredients instead of the traditional measuring cups and spoons. We even got the children to help with the dishwasher “assembly line” and show them how a restaurant kitchen can get all their dishes done so quickly!

                      

Once the sauce was simmering on the stove everyone helped out to stretch out the focaccia dough and had fun poking little holes all over it before it went in the oven to bake. Next was the broccoli salad, which involved chopping up all the vegetables and making a homemade dressing. While half of the group worked on the salad, the remaining children helped measure all the ingredients for the black bean brownies. Everything was measured into a food processor, another new tool the children learned how it worked. This was the first time most of the group (including volunteers!) had tried brownies made with black beans instead of flour. I guess this is what happens when you let nutrition students plan the dessert menu!

The timing worked out perfectly so that we started with the salad for our first course while everything was finishing baking. We got seated for lunch around 12:45 and had an excellent family-style meal of homemade lasagne and focaccia- it was a huge hit! Even the black bean brownies were enjoyed by everyone, a few children even said they would try making them again at home! By 1:30 we were started to clean up and say our goodbyes. The group left with full bellies and a recipe book of everything we made. We can’t wait to hopefully cook with them again sometime this winter!

Rickson Ridge Grade 2 Class at the Honey Bee Research Centre

Today was a very exciting day for Garden2Table. We got take a grade 2 class from Rickson Ridge to visit the Honey Bee Research Center on campus. With so many eager-to-learn kids and beautiful fall weather, it was a recipe for success.

            We started off by learning all about the different types of bees and what makes a honeybee a honeybee. It is so interesting how bees use such a complicated system in order to create the honey. We also learned all about the other reasons bees are so important such as pollinating plants, which feed us as well as the animals we eat. After a lot of pictures and even some dead bees, and of course some bee dancing, it was time to go take a look at the hives!

            The Honey Bee Research Center maintains about 300 bee colonies! We got to a look at one of the hives to see what goes on inside. Not surprising, when we took out a part of the honeycomb, it was covered in bees and lots of honey!  We even got to try a very special type of honey called goldenrod honey, it was delicious!

            After learning just about everything we could about bees and honey, we took the school bus over to the arboretum for some fun and games. Starting off with a quick game similar to duck, duck, goose, but much for fun because we were buzzing bees instead! Then we divided up the class into worker bees (girls) and drones (boys) and simulated the honey making process. The worker bees were looking for honey (hidden puzzle pieces) to bring back the Queen Bee! Everyone worked together to put the puzzles together to create our honey! It was pretty tough dodging the bears (Garden2Table coordinators) that were trying to take the honey!

St. Ignatious Grade 7s (second class) in the Garden!

What a fantastic way to finish our garden tours this season! The spirited, insightful grade 7 class from St. Ignatious came out to learn all about organic farming….and of course to get their hands dirty.

 

            The garden tour highlighted the innovative techniques in preserving the crops such as the use of comfrey tea and shiny objects that help keep our “frenimies” a.k.a the animals away. The ever-popular spilanthes plant kept its reputation in intriguing all of the kids to try it, followed by almost all of them spitting it out! It is interesting to think about the medicinal plants and how they were used! Imagine having to eat some spilanthes in order to get rid of a toothache…YUCK!

            Once the kids learned all about the farm, it was time to get dirty! We grabbed our pitch forks and headed to the back field to harvest some red potatoes! After lots of hard work we took our buckets of dirty potatoes to be cleaned and ready for the thanksgiving market. Once the potatoes were ready to go we moved on to plucking out all of the delicious carrots for the market as well!

Cant wait to see you back here for some cooking and of course eating!