Private: BrightBites Blog

My grade 4/5 class hosted the Cooking For Kids program in our classroom. The Health Unit nurses came in for 2 100-minute sessions and talk the kids about proper hand and food washing, using kitchen tools safely, and how to create healthy meals and snacks for themselves. We also watched related videos and did worksheets to prepare beforehand. Healthy recipes went home to parents.

During our Wellness evening, the Healthy Schools Student Club set up a smoothie bar. They learned about proper hygiene while preparing food for others. They also tried out a few different fruit smoothie recipes and served them to their friends and families. It was a great success!

This past spring, we decided to grow vegetables and fruits from seed or by purchasing organic plants from local stores. We attended several workshops and events hosted by TPL. One of the workshops offered organic seeds, soil and cow manure pots. At this workshop we planted heirloom lettuce, golden nugget pepper, red pear tomatoes and Moskovich tomato from seeds. We also planted numerous sweet peppers, other tomato plants and cucumber plants from seeds and seedlings. Some of the plants died and some unexpected ones flourished like an indoor cherry tomato plant. We diligently watered and weeded our plants. Recently we harvested bags of Roma tomatoes but we had to battle some squirrels for our cucumbers (and some tomatoes). This garden was inspired because we wished to ‘grow gazpacho’. Meaning, we wanted to grow all the ingredients to make Spanish gazpacho. Next year, we intend to add garlic to the list of plants we grow.

We learned a great deal about gardening and healthy eating by growing our own garden.