Food, health, and sustainable living

Food education

 

Over the past few months, children across Anderston Primary have been learning about food: where it comes from, healthy eating, and the importance of sustainability. Children have been learning about food life cycles, planting broad beans in transparent pots to watch them germinate and next term will be learning about farming in the past and present, looking in particular at food that is produced in Scotland. Teachers are hoping to take some children to visit a farm and grow wheat in the classroom, learn about flour, and make some soda bread. Food for Thought In addition to the ongoing activities around this topic, we were the recipient of a Food for Thought funding bid which combined three strands of activity in order to create interdisciplinary learning opportunities, culminating in the practical use of skills and knowledge in a professional context. This project also provided funding for a mobile kitchen to allow an ongoing legacy of food education capability for the school. This project is a great example of how the Parent Council, teachers, and wider community can work together to provide opportunities for the children of Anderston Primary. All pupils have had the opportunity to participate in cooking activities, with the Primary 7’s having regular teaching input from Claire Slocombe, who put in a huge amount of effort on the project. The children were motivated and are keen to continue to develop their knowledge and understanding further. They particularly enjoyed the ‘hands on’ experiences. This has not been a ‘one off’ project: we aim to reach further into our community, upskilling more parents, improving the food knowledge of our families and helping them to make healthy food choices. We would like to expand the project to after school parent/pupil cooking clubs with an emphasis on the diverse cultural food backgrounds within our community.  The Parent Council will be sharing recipes that have been enjoyed by our students so far at our parents night on Wednesday 14th March.  Please join our tasting session to share food and ideas. The P7 parents will see the fruits of their children’s efforts in person as they are invited to come to the Pop Up Restaurant on Friday 16th March. Fair Trade During Fair Trade fortnight, the pupils on the Enterprise Committee have been raising awareness about Fair Trade, with the help of local Co-operative, Tesco, and Sainsbury’s supermarkets who have donated fair trade chocolate and bananas to help raise funds.  The committee worked in partnership with the P7 healthy eating committee to produce fair-trade healthy treats using bananas as a natural sugar substitute.  These were shared with the whole school to help highlight the cause.