Market Garden and Chicken Coup

The St Thomas More Market Garden program operates throughout the school year involving students from all year levels. This program provides our students with a hands-on and practical approach to recycling, gardening, animal care, cooking and enterprise.

Our Market Garden houses six chickens and several garden beds that allow a rotation of Summer and Winter crops. Each day children collect food scraps from the school to feed the chickens and collect their eggs. These eggs are then sold to our families or put towards our cooking program.

The Cooking Program allows buddy classes to work together to cook a morning tea item that can be sold to the students in the school. Earlier this year the Kindergarten and Year Three classes worked together to cook 150 choc chip muffins to sell to our school community. We raised enough money to buy our Winter crop of seedlings.

Through a Market Garden program, children learn:

• positive food habits for life
• about their natural environment, the seasons, and how to care for gardens
• practical skills, from recycling, composting and preserving to budgeting and fundraising
• life skills, such as cooperating, sharing, critical thinking and leadership
• by doing and having fun (they don’t even realise they’re learning)
• to be engaged, especially those who face barriers learning in the traditional classroom environment.

Our Gardening Club is run one lunchtime each week, this allows students to spend their lunch break tending to the garden and caring for the chickens. When our crops are ready to be harvested, we sell some produce to our community and use some of the ingredients in our cooking programs.