Nano Cottage Kitchen Garden

Nano Cottage is a farm cottage used as a springboard for language and communication development. Programs held at Nano Cottage offer identified students from St Michael’s, support with talking and listening skills in a natural setting.

Built in 2001, the idea for Nano Cottage was born when teachers took the school's language group to the Nagle College Agricultural Farm (on-site) to see the animals. These visits produced a remarkable response from the children, which gave the teachers the idea to establish a farm cottage as a platform for supporting students with language and communication skills.

The programs at Nano Cottage use play and a naturalistic approach to language learning where themes allow children to develop functional skills. Students are taken out of the classroom environment and interact in hands-on gardening and cooking activities with a more social dimension encouraging:

• collaboration between students
• listening and speaking skills
• confidence and self-esteem
• the development of technology skills.
  

Students keep a scrapbook and photographic record or videos on a USB to take home and share with their families.

Philosophy

A kitchen garden is created to provide edible, aromatic and beautiful resources for a kitchen. The creation and care of a kitchen garden teaches children about the natural world, its beauty and how to care for it, how best to use the resources we have, and an appreciation for how easy it is to bring joy and wellbeing into one’s life through growing, harvesting, preparing and sharing fresh, seasonal produce.

Benefits

• Lifelong skills in the kitchen and garden
  
• Introduction to and appreciation of fresh seasonal food
  
• Socialisation through teamwork and sharing a meal
  
• Practical understanding of environmental sustainability
  
• Understanding of the link between good food choices and optimum health
  
• Active, hands-on activity and exercise.

Students

• Develop new skills in the kitchen and garden which equip them to lead lives that are not dependent on processed foods
• Model a new way to connect with parents/family in discussing what happens in the kitchen garden program and applying what is learnt (growing things, cooking things) at home
• Develop understanding of time needed for important things to happen, e.g. grow food to harvest
• Introduce new foods, new flavours, new textures
• Develop appreciation of fresh seasonal food
• Learn and record specific vocabulary to describe some of the textures, tastes and sights that they experience
• Develop confidence and self-esteem
• Encourage physical activity
• Develop cooperative behaviour as all work is done as part of a small group
• Develop social skills at the table, e.g. sharing, conversation
• Develop deeper understandings and tolerance of cultural difference by exposure to other culinary traditions
• Develop practical understanding of environmental issues such as soil health, water management, seed saving, organic pest control and the importance of plant diversity
• Encourage the link between good food choices and optimum health
• Develop better understanding of the relationship between the garden and the table.

Schools

• Achieve learning outcomes through an innovative, hands-on approach
  
• Create excitement within the school community
  
• Build students’, families’ and local communities’ pride in their school
  
• Be recognised as a valuable contributor to educational innovation.

* With acknowledgement to the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation

Programs

The programs currently operating through Nano Cottage include:

The Kitchen Garden program

At St Michael's we offer a specialised language program for children diagnosed by a speech pathologist as having a severe expressive and/or receptive language disorder.

The language group students grow small crops such as parsley and peas and use their produce as ingredients when cooking simple recipes in the Nagle College Junior Kitchen. Students also use eggs which have been collected from the Nagle Farm adjacent to Nano Cottage.

The program uses play and a naturalistic approach to language learning where themes allow children to develop functional skills. The themes have included such titles as:

• A Day at the Farm
• Let’s Party
• Tell Me a Story
• Going Shopping
• We're all Going on a Holiday.

Mini excursions form part of the program where possible. For example, the shopping theme enabled the children to visit the local Woolworths Supermarket to buy Easter eggs and the holiday theme was enhanced through a visit to the local Travelodge Motel.

Parents and classroom teachers are an integral part of the project with children regularly communicating their experiences through graphic images of the weekly sessions.

As a true measure of the program's success, the children's achievements are noted not only at the cottage and in its surrounds, but also in each child's regular classroom, their homes and other social settings.

The Step-Up to School program

This is a transition program offering extra support to children commencing school at St Michael's who have not been to preschool and/or have been identified as having severe receptive/expressive language delays.

This program runs for four (4) consecutive Friday mornings in Term 4 each year and is coordinated by special educators and support staff from St Michael's school and the Catholic Education Office, Parramatta.

Aims of the program:

• To introduce children to some of the procedures of our Kindergarten orientation week. For example, learning the songs and procedures that will be used and exploring the school in a very small group with parental support.
• To allow teachers to observe interactions between children and parents, children and children and children and teachers.
• To allow children the opportunity to separate from parents/care givers and then be involved in the morning activities in one of our Kindergarten classrooms with our experienced Kindergarten children as hosts.
• To allow friendships to begin developing both for parents and children.
• To allow parents to learn some skills associated with commencing school.
• To make the children and their families feel welcome and valued at St Michael’s.

Further information