Inspire your students to cook up a healthy future at your school!
The Kitchen Kart is a compact mobile kitchen and teaching program that is an easy and affordable way for primary schools to provide children with basic cookery skills that will help them to make their own good nutritional choices for life!
Most of us would agree that it’s vital to equip future generations with the skills and knowledge to make healthy food choices.
Eating patterns that begin in childhood affect health and well-being throughout life, so early education is an important step in starting children with a positive relationship with food, and this begins with cooking classes in primary schools.
Joanne Bowskill and Holly Boal from Get Kids Cooking are great talent and have taught thousands of Aussie kids how to cook and appreciate healthy and nutritious home-made food in their school cooking classes. With their practical experience and research, they have developed The Kitchen Kart - a compact mobile kitchen along with lesson plans that is an easy and affordable way for primary schools to provide children with basic cookery skills that will help them to make their own good nutritional choices for life!
The Kitchen Kart is a compact mobile kitchen that comes complete with oven, stovetop and even a kitchen sink! Equipped with all the cooking tools and equipment required to run lessons, The Kitchen Kart makes it easy for teachers to deliver cooking classes in a hall, covered area, class or staff room – even wheeled out to cook in the school kitchen garden.
The Get Kids Cooking program in schools
The Get Kids Cooking @ School program is an easy teaching method that provides age-appropriate lesson plans that meet Australian Curriculum goals to schools throughout Australia.
The Kitchen Kart (patent pending) is a mobile cooking cart that was developed specifically for the schools market, and contains an oven, hotplates, chopping surfaces and everything required when teaching cooking (including the kitchen sink!). It is easy and safe to move, so classes aren’t restricted to one physical location and can be held outside, near a school garden, inside a hall or undercover learning area.
The Kitchen Kart comes with ‘Cook in a Box’ learning modules that are linked to The Australian Curriculum and can be delivered to any school in Australia. The online support makes the program accessible to teachers everywhere and this simple cooking program increases a schools’ capacity to promote and deliver healthy eating initiatives. The learning modules come complete with healthy, allergy aware hands-on recipes, all ingredients and cooking tools, lesson plan, teachers guide, instructional video and DET risk assessment.
The Kitchen Kart can be purchased on it's own or with the Cook In A Box teaching modules for a complete learning system that is aligned to The Australian Curriculum.
Not only do children learn about fresh fruit and vegetables, they use them in our practical lessons to create healthy meals they then enjoy eating at school. Tried and tested by thousands of children, the recipes are proven to encourage children to be more open to trying new ingredients and tastes.
Research shows that hands-on learning promotes success in science, numeracy, and literacy, and develops collaboration and critical thinking skills.
"For many Australians, cooking is a real pleasure and a genuine lifestyle interest as well as a necessary and useful life skill", says The Kitchen Kart Founder, Joanne Bowskill. "Once kids get into cooking, they really love it. It’s wonderful seeing how being involved in the preparation of a meal can stimulate a child’s appetite to try new things".
"As well as being fun, fostering a love of cooking in young kids can lead to many social and health benefits, including increasing their attention levels at school and teaching them the nutritional value of fresh fruit and vegetables. Being involved in the preparation of a meal is a great way for kids to express themselves, and over time gain confidence so they can start to develop healthy eating habits that they carry with them throughout life", she said.
Get Kids Cooking LIVE at The Sydney Royal Easter Show — Wednesday 16 March 2016
Spend a day at the Sydney Royal Easter Show before it opens to the public. The Royal Agricultural Society is extending an exclusive invitation to Stage 2-3 NSW Primary School students to learn how food and fibre is produced in Australia at the Show's Food Farm and Farmyard Nursery.
This is the perfect way to celebrate the NEW Agriculture and Food week in 2016.
The Primary Preview Day will give students hands-on opportunity to learn from farmers in a round-robin workshop format. Your program for the day is linked to NSW Syllabus outcomes.
Plan your excursion to the Primary Preview Day now! It will be first in best dressed when the online booking system opens on 4 February, 2016. Tickets for this event are just at $15 per student with complimentary teachers passes*.
Can't make the Preview Day? The Show Schools Program education sessions are on every school-day during the Show: 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 29, 30 March 2016.
For more information on how to get your school its own Kitchen Kart and lesson plan modules, or see The Get Kids Cooking program in action, go to getkidscooking.com.au/the-kitchen-kart or getkidscooking.com.au/events or contact Joanne Bowskill on 0433 641 604.
A simple, cost effective cooking program, linked to the curriculum, with recipes and ingredients delivered to your school.
Contact us for pricing on how to get your students cooking up a healthy future!
info@getkidscooking.com.au
or call Joanne Bowskill directly on 0433 641 604
The Kitchen Kart
http://getkidscooking.com.au/kitchen-kart-at-school/
Cook in a Box
http://getkidscooking.com.au/cook-in-a-box/
Joanne Bowskill
Food Educator and Founder
As a mother of three, Joanne values the importance of her children eating healthily, being able to make good food choices and developing a lifelong positive relationship with food. After working many years in the corporate world and running her own businesses, often food related, Get Kids Cooking is a culmination of passion and experience.
Holly Boal
Food Educator and Co-Owner
Holly is a mother of one, with a love of cooking, baking and teaching children to cook. She brings to Get Kids Cooking a solid background in marketing, sales and operations having previously worked for large franchise systems including Boost Juice Australia.
Why we Started
Over the years we have witnessed many great health campaigns from good old “Norm”and the couch potatoes, “Life be in it” and “slip slop slap”!
Despite these initiatives, statistics on obesity in children does not appear to be improving.
At the same time, I also noticed a real loss of cooking skills, not only in our children, but in my generation. In our society today, many households are struggling to get a quick, nutritious family meal on the table, let alone cook from scratch and take the time to involve their children in the cooking process.
On one of my work trips away from home in my previous job, I was enjoying the luxury of reading all of the day’s newspapers and came across 5 different articles all discussing various angles of the childhood obesity issue, lamenting the loss of cooking classes in high schools; calling for mandatory lessons to be reintroduced and generally discussing the lack of success in turning around the obesity statistics.
At P&C meetings in my own daughter’s school, I was really encouraged to learn about the amazing Stephanie Alexander Garden Kitchen program and was delighted to hear they were going through the process to become accredited and build the required teaching kitchen.
We watched in anticipation as the gardens expanded and produce stalls were set up to sell the results. Then, despite Principal support and the commitment of a main teacher to run the program, teacher and parent supporters, our school withdrew from the program due to the commitment and requirements from the school – time (both teacher and volunteer), space, infrastructure and money. it is a brillant program but just doesn’t suit every school.
This was extremely disappointing and what started to worry me even more was the thought that there must be countless other schools and students missing out on learning cooking skills.
So, I started to look at how to remove all of the obstacles that may prevent a school from getting involved in teaching kids about healthy food and the skills to prepare it. From that, our mobile kitchen with no long term commitment, no capital investment, no lesson planning from teachers and no volunteer burden evolved.
After my husband and I spent many hours working through the logistics and safety issues that this presented, we approached my daughter’s school to run a pilot program.
This was met with overwhelming feedback from teachers, parents and students alike and so our journey began and Get Kids Cooking was created!
Joanne Bowskill – Founder of Get Kids Cooking
Comments