Planning support for early childhood educators

Perfect for little hands and curious minds, the Kitchen Garden Program for Early Childhood promotes a whole-service approach to teaching children about fresh, seasonal, delicious food.  

‘The Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program membership provides us with an inclusive framework to implement, reflect, develop and embed positive experiences for our children and community in a hands-on play-based program.’ — Kitchen Garden Educator, Vista Valley Kindergarten

Of particular benefit to our early childhood members is using the Shared Table — our online resource library and community hub — to access over 1200 learning resources. 500 of these resources integrate with the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) and the National Quality Standard (NQS) and support documentation of kitchen garden experiences for their Quality Improvement Plan (QIP).

Adding the Kitchen Garden Program to your Quality Improvement Plan will help you embed training and program concepts into a service's best practices and teaching. It will also help strengthen assessment and rating.

Documenting the kitchen garden journey

Documenting and sharing kitchen garden experiences on the Shared Table helps educators keep track of their development, but just as importantly, it's allows them to field questions and celebrate milestones (and wobbles!) with other early childhood educators from across the country. 

Educators can put this into practice by setting aside five to ten minutes every week or fortnight to post on the Shared Table. Here are our tips especially for early childhood educators:

• Aim for at least one post about a kitchen or garden experience that was implemented, the impact it had on the children and families, and what you plan to focus on next. This keeps your kitchen garden experience documented together in one convenient place. 
• When an assessor visits, share your Kitchen Garden Program journey with them on the Shared Table, showing what you’ve documented and how you’ve progressed. Your collection of photographs and reflections will be ready to go. Have a look at how Vista Valley Kindergarten record their journey on the Shared Table.
• Use the hashtag #EYLF when posting on the Shared Table to alert other services to your learning outcomes.
• To complement this documentation, you can share your journey as an ongoing display booklet to share with assessors, families, communities and those visiting your service.  Print out your posts from the Shared Table and keep them handy for parents to view. Print out he recipe or resource that their child  experienced.
• When children have participated in a cooking experience, they love to share that recipe at home. To encourage this, you might put up a sign saying: “Today we made Minestrone Soup! Here are some photos of us in action and the recipe for you to make at home.” Parents and community love to see what the children and educators have been participating in throughout the year.

Further tools to help support early childhood

On the Shared Table, members can access signage resources and our logo. Display these on your building, in the garden and in the foyer. Visible signage will show assessors and families that your service is part of the globally-recognised Kitchen Garden Program. Often, prospective families choose their service based on seeing our logo!

We have heard many stories about new team members and families wanting to be a part of a service because of the reputation of the Kitchen Garden Program, our 10 program fundamentals and the core value of delivering pleasurable food education. One director said they had a family deciding between them and another service, and when they saw they ran the Kitchen Garden Program, it helped them decide that their service was the one most aligned with their values.

These are just some of the ways a membership to the Kitchen Garden Program can enhance early childhood teaching. Our Support Team is available five days a week to offer tailored advice and inspiration to all our members. Not a member yet? Join a community of schools and early childhood services right around Australia teaching young people how to grow, harvest, prepare and share! Learn more on 13000 SAKGF (13000 72543) or email membership@kitchengardenfoundation.org.au