Cook It Up Badge Inspiration
Get inspired with these ideas submitted from schools that earned the Cook It Up badge!
Chef Ambassadors
Our grade 7/8 students who participated in the You’re the Chef program last year became our Chef Ambassadors this year. They had the opportunity to teach our grade 3 students the importance of healthy eating and put their kitchen skills and knowledge, and teach the grade 3 students how to make simple, healthy and tasty recipes.
“You’re the Chef” Cooking Club
Students at E.I.McCulley love to partake in a variety of different activities! This love of participation and engagement, helped the dedicated teachers at E.I.McCulley start a great new club! The teachers offered the club “You’re the Chef” (YTC) This was a super opportunity for the students to take on responsibilities and learn new roles in the kitchen. Some students stated that they indeed enjoyed the club immensely and definitely loved helping around the kitchen even more at their own homes. Their favourite recipe was rice vermicelli with greens. We will be passing this information along to the DSBN Summer Heat program, where students can work on their cooking skills.
“You’re the Chef” Program
We have been fortunate enough to be introduced to the York Region “You’re the Chef” program at Jersey P.S. You’re the Chef (YTC) is a hands-on cooking program that develops the skills and confidence for junior and intermediate students to prepare healthy and tasty recipes emphasizing vegetables and fruit. A teacher at our school was trained on how to implement the program, and with the help of another teacher at the school, we started running the program last Thursday after school. We will be running it for 5 weeks, and each week will have a theme (e.g. Breakfast Blast-Off, Delicious Desserts, Savory Snacks, etc.). Last week, we started with “Breakfast Blast-Off,” and students worked together to follow a recipe for “Banana Berry Smoothies” and “Blueberry Pancakes!” We have eight Grade 8 students involved in the program; we are hoping to offer the program again in the spring, where we can offer this program to our junior students by having these Grade 8’s be leaders and facilitate it for them!
Cooking Program via Green Apple Grant
In September our school was the recipient of the Green Apple Grant, we received $1,000 to put toward a student lead Nutrition Program. The idea was that students would prepare healthy, nutritious meals for our Breakfast Club under the supervision of Staff. Any Intermediate Students can participate and on Wednesday 6 Grade 7 & 8 students came out to learn the valuable Life Skill of prepping, cooking and serving healthy foods. This Program will continue until the end of the year with the students preparing a variety of breakfast foods from muffins, quiches, home made oatmeal bars, omelettes, and more! The students confidence has sky rocketed from this Program and the same students continue to come each week (maybe because they get to sample what they are making.) Most recently, students who we wouldn’t have expected to participate are showing up to learn how to cook & make memories with their fellow peers, it’s just a bonus that the food goes toward feeding the rest of the school too.
