Grow Your Own Grub >> Online Resources for Teachers

This section introduces the third session of the Grow Your Own Grub project.

This final session will be slightly different because the aim is to have parents present and joining in with the food-tasting. Of course it is difficult to predict how many parents will come but you may have an idea by the number of reply slips you have received.

The session could be run in a number of ways depending on what you think is most suitable for your school, here are some suggestions:

Ideally the final session would be one and half hours.

1. Split the class into their vegetable groups again, with parents joining their children's groups, and have a ‘round robin' system where each group takes it in turn to do four different activities for 15 minutes each:

a. harvesting their own produce e.g. carrot group picks carrots

b. washing and preparing their veg/fruit for eating

c .playing a food game e.g. quiz (with prizes)

d. another game of your choice

Food tasting can take place at the end of the session with the whole class for up to half an hour

2. The food has already been harvested and washed ready for Session Three – this may take up to half an hour.

When parents arrive the class is divided into their groups and each group prepares a dish as artistically as possible. When they have all finished the dishes are shared – this part of the session may take up to 40 minutes.

After the food-tasting the children and their parents can remain in their groups and do a food quiz for the rest of the session, one group could win a prize.

Session Three (harvesting)
Teacher's guidelines

Introduce the third session:

“We have been looking after our plants by watering and weeding them and now they have started to produce food for us to eat.

In this session we will be harvesting our food, which means either digging it up from the ground or picking it off the plant. Once we have collected our food we will learn how to prepare it for eating, this can be as simple as just washing it and eating it raw, preparing a simple dish with it such as a salad or sandwich or making a cooked meal using our food e.g. pasta and tomato sauce or vegetable soup."

Discussion with class:

Discuss what the children have enjoyed over the last few weeks; what has been their favourite part of the project - sowing the seeds, when they first appeared above the compost, planting them etc?

Part of this session involves asking the children to join in with the evaluation of the project so this discussion can be useful to help them start thinking about what they have liked/not liked etc.

Children's Session Three Information Cards:

“As each vegetable/fruit is harvested and prepared for eating in a different way, we have information cards for each group which tells us how to harvest and then eat your vegetable/fruit. For example do we peel our fruit or vegetable? Is it better to leave the skin on?”

This practical session involves of harvesting our food which has grown over the last few weeks, there should be some spinach, carrots, tomatoes and peas which are ready to pick (if there is no produce you will need to buy some fruit/veg to use instead).

As each group will need to harvest their food in different ways we have included four instruction cards to show how to do this

Children's Harvesting Cards:
Click on each to open:

This practical session consists of preparing the foods which the children have grown over the last few weeks. What you prepare will depend on your school's facilities and perhaps your time so we have separated this part into three levels which range from the simplest food preparation to the more complicated. These different levels of food preparation will require different equipment so we have included what you will need with each separate level. There are four recipe cards for each group to give the children some ideas about what they can do with each fruit/vegetable, the cards can be photocopied for the children to take home with them.

Level 1: The simplest way to eat fruit or vegetables is to eat them raw! The four crops which have been chosen for this project can be eaten almost immediately after harvesting them. The only preparation is to wash them (refer to children's information cards for specific details). After they have been washed they can be tasted by the children. You will need:

Level 2: The next simplest way to eat fruit/vegetables is to make a simple dish which they can easily be added to. Examples are:

Scourer/cloth to clean veg or peeler, tea-towel to dry them, plates, a chopping board, skewers, any extra foodstuffs e.g. bread, other salad vegetables or fruit.

Level 3: If you do have some cooking facilities then you can prepare a simple cooked dish, such as vegetable soup or pasta and vegetables with a tomato sauce. Please refer to the recipe cards for a step-by-step guide of how to cook these simple dishes.

You will need: Scourer/cloth to clean veg or peeler, tea-towel to dry them, plates, a chopping board, any extra foodstuffs e.g. bread, other salad vegetables or fruit, some pans, a ladle and a wooden stirring spoon.

The seeds have been sown, the seedlings planted, they have been tended and have grown to produce some lovely fresh food which has now been harvested and eaten!

Now the Grow Your Own Grub project is finished you may all be brimming with enthusiasm for growing your own food! Of course the project can be repeated each year and different vegetables can be tried, there are even foods which can be planted in autumn which will begin to grow through the winter which you can harvest in May/June time of next year.

In the 'What Next' section we have included some ‘extension ideas' with suggestions for further gardening activities for schools with or without any growing space. We have also provided a resource list which includes other packs which are available to schools, useful websites, books and helpful organisations.