Description: Students use the ingredients and cooking plan from Part 1 to prepare, cook, serve, and reflect on a meal made with ingredients from the school garden. They work together to practise cooking skills, use kitchen equipment safely, and discover how garden ingredients can be turned into a shared meal.
Intention: Students experience the journey from garden to plate by preparing and cooking with ingredients they have grown or harvested. They develop practical cooking skills, learn to work together in the kitchen, and reflect on the food they have made and where it comes from.
Make sure the school garden has vegetables, edible flowers and/or herbs that are ready to harvest. Check which plants are safe to eat and prepare any necessary harvesting tools and kitchen equipment.
Garden Treasure Hunt
Take students into the garden with a simple challenge: “What could we make from our garden?”
In small groups, students look for vegetables, herbs, or other edible plants that are ready to harvest.
Ask:
Students make a quick list or sketch of their “garden ingredients.”
Recipe Challenge
Back in the classroom, introduce the challenge: “Your team has to find a delicious recipe that uses most of its ingredients from the garden.”
In groups, students brainstorm or look through a selection of child-friendly recipes.
Recipe Detective
Groups examine their chosen recipe and make two lists:
We have:
We also need:
They check:
Choose Our Recipe
Each group gives a quick pitch:
“We want to make ____. We can use ____ from the garden, but we still need ____.”
You can decide either together with the class or as the teacher if recepies are appropriate and if the cooking is doable.
Cooking Plan
Create the final shopping/bringing list together.
Let students discover first: Don’t tell them what they can make. The question “What can we make with what we have?” encourages curiosity and creative thinking.
Use the garden as the starting point: Try not to let students begin with a recipe and then search for ingredients. Start with what is actually growing in the garden.
Encourage substitutions: Ask: “Could something from our garden replace an ingredient we don’t have?” This encourages creativity and helps students think about sustainable food choices.
Keep the recipe realistic: A recipe that uses many garden ingredients but requires complicated equipment or lots of additional ingredients may not be the best choice.
| Investigate | Create |