Lettuce Explore! A Lettuce Taste Test

In this activity, kids (and adults) can explore the flavours, textures, and appearance of lettuce and greens. Taking some time to appreciate the qualities of the simple foods we grow and eat can be a great sensory and learning experience. You might even be surprised to find out how much beauty and flavour can be packed into a humble lettuce leaf! 

You Will Need:

  • Three or four varieties of lettuce or salad greens (from your garden, farmers market or grocery store)

  • White paper, pencil, and felts/crayons/coloured pencils

Instructions:

1. Select 3 or 4 varieties of lettuce.

2. Wash and arrange a few leaves of each lettuce on a plate.

3. Ask all tasters to wash their hands.

4. Pick one variety of lettuce to start. 

5. Use your sense of sight to observe what the lettuce looks like. Look at the back, front, and side of the leaf. Draw or trace the lettuce leaf on a piece of paper, add details and colour if you like.

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6. Taste the lettuce. As you chew the lettuce think about the texture of the lettuce in your mouth. Add some words that describe the texture to your drawing. Next, think about how the lettuce tastes. Add some descriptive words to your drawing. Do all the parts of the lettuce have the same taste and texture? If you need help thinking of descriptive words we have included a few in a list below.  

7. Draw and taste the other varieties of lettuce.

8. Vote on the lettuce you like the best.

Taste & Texture Descriptive Words

Lettuce Fun Facts:

  • Historians believe lettuce was first cultivated in ancient Egypt.

  • Lettuce is often eaten raw but it is also delicious to eat steamed, in a stir fry or grilled on the barbecue. Have you ever tried barbecued lettuce?

  • In 2015, the astronauts on the International Space Station grew and ate red romaine lettuce called “Outredgeous” lettuce.

  • Lettuce is part of the Asteraceae family. This family also includes the daisy and sunflower. 

  • There are four main types of Lettuce: butterhead, crisphead, loose leaf, and romaine.

Getting to know your food - Vegetable Biographies

This week, we are learning all about food systems. What is a food system? It’s the journey that food takes from being planted as a seed all the way to being eaten by you.

We’ve got two simple creative writing activities to help get kids thinking about where their food comes from and how their food choices have an impact.

In some cases, like the beans and peas from your windowsill vegetable garden, that journey is very short. You plant the seed, care for the seedling, transplant to a bigger pot if needed, harvest it once it’s full grown, wash it, cook it, compost any scraps, and eat it. 

In other cases, the journey can be quite long with a number of different steps, including growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, selling, eating, and composting. Some foods travel really far before they’re eaten. Now that many fruits and vegetables are grown on big farms all year round in warm climates, we get them at any time of year here too, even if they’re not “in season”—meaning growing naturally that time of year. 

Think of something that you like to eat that doesn’t grow nearby. For example, here in Vancouver, lemons don’t grow well. It’s not warm enough. So the lemons we see at the grocery store are likely grown somewhere much warmer and far away, like India, Brazil, California, and Mexico.

We’re going to do a fun creative writing project to think about the different journeys that food can take to get to your plate. First, you’ll make a pros and cons list and second you’ll write a biography for two different vegetables. 

Activity One: Pros/Cons

What’s a pro/con list? This is a list where you think up all the positive or good things about something--these are the pros--and all the negative or bad things--these are the cons. For example--let’s make a pro/con list about peanut butter. The pros I can think of are: 

  • it’s delicious 

  • for some people, it’s healthy

The cons are that:

  • it sticks to the roof of your mouth 

  • some people are very allergic to it 

Let’s make a list of the pros and cons about food that comes from far away. Can you think about all the positive things about food that comes from far away? Can you think about all the negative things? 

Can’t think of anything? Click here for some sample answers. 

Activity Two: Vegetable Biographies 

Now that we’ve thought of all the pros and cons of food that is grown far away, let’s come up with a story about two different fruits or vegetables and the story of how they ended up on your plate. 

What’s a biography? It’s the story of someone's life written by someone else. In this case, it’s the story of the life of two vegetables written by you. 

For the first story, think about a fruit or vegetable that grows locally. For the second story, think of one that grows far away. You can choose whatever kind of fruit or vegetable you like. 

With your grown-up, you can research:

  • How it’s grown

  • How it’s picked or harvested

  • Where it grows 

  • How to cook with it

To create your stories, you can:

  1. Draw a picture of the two different journeys.

  2. Say the story out loud to your grown up and ask them to write it down on the worksheet. 

  3. Write it down yourself on your worksheet. 

The Vegetable Biography worksheets have some questions to get you started on your story. 

1. What country do I grow in? 

2. What’s the weather like? 

3. How am I harvested? 

4. How do I get from the farm to the table?

5. Who are the people that your fruit or vegetable meet? Do they meet any of the people described from this week’s earlier lessons about food systems?

We’ve included two examples of a biographies of local habanero peppers and biographies of one that grows from far away. 

By Greta, Age 9, Austin, Texas

Food Biography - Local 

Once upon a time a habanero chile was growing in Texas. It is a very hot chile if you eat it, and it likes to grow in hot weather like we have in Texas. Because its seeds are so hot most animals don’t eat them but birds can’t feel the burn.

Food Biography - Far Away 

One spring day, a sandhill crane ate a habanero and began its annual migration and flew to Vancouver. There, it pooped. And the poop, which contained a few undigested habanero seeds, landed in a pot of dirt on a balcony in False Creek. Then, as usual in Vancouver, it rained. And the seeds sprouted. Fortunately, the pot (and balcony) belonged to a family with relatives in Texas who knew what it was, and how deliciously spicy it could be.

DA END

By Nico, age 4, Vancouver, BC 

Food Biography - Local (Habanero) 

His name is Hot Dog. He lives in our garden. He lives in Vancouver

Food Biography - Far Away (Habanero) 

This is Lemon. He grows next to the lettuce. He lives on Mars. 

Drawings by Nico’s mom

Drawings by Nico’s mom

We hope you enjoy this activity about food systems! We can’t wait to see or read your vegetable biographies. We hope you share them with us.  

For our full Where Food Comes From: Food Systems Lesson and more activities click here to explore all of Lesson 9 of Growing Chefs! at Home.

Growing Chefs! at Home: Lesson 9

This week we are diving in to look a little bit closer at our food systems, exploring where our food comes from and those that are involved in all the steps of our food system. Amanda is joining us this week to check in with some of your gardens at home and to talk a little about urban agriculture and get us thinking about what it means to support a local food system.


We also have some very special guests from Vancouver Island, Farmer Mich and Chef Patrick show us an example of how they eat very local food as they invite us to visit them our their farm and in their kitchen to teach us how to make a delicious frittata!

Related Activities:

Food Systems Matching Worksheet - Print this fun worksheet and see if you can match the people and places to the part of the food system they are involved in. (Answer key included).

Thank a Local Food Systems Hero - Our volunteers have come together to share their appreciation for their food heroes. Watch the video of their thank you’s and use our letter template to draft your own thank you, or maybe make a video of your own to share, or draw a picture. If you know the mailing address or social media account of your food hero be sure to share your appreciation with them directly!

Food Systems Hero Art & Colouring Sheet - Who is your food systems hero? Are they a farmer, a chef, a farmer, maybe a beekeeper? Design your own food systems superhero! Thank you to our friends at Daiya Foods for sharing their wonderful hero artwork!

Getting to Know Your Food: Write a Vegetable Biography - Sometimes we have the option to chose local food, sometimes we don’t and that’s ok. The more we know about where our food comes from the more informed decisions we can make to help build and maintain healthy food systems for all. Get to know your food’s story with our fun vegetable biography creative writing activity. 

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There's No Room for Racism in a Just Food System (or a Just Society)

This year has been challenging for many reasons. It has also become a year about shining a light on many of the issues and injustices in our society. 2020 has therefore also become about challenging ourselves and our current systems to do better, to be better, and to move forward--not backward--as individuals, as communities, as a whole. 

Across the United States and Canada people have come out to demonstrate in response to the continued police brutality towards Black Americans after the murder of George Floyd last week. 

Racism, and specifically Anti-Black racism, is just as prevalent in Canada as in other countries. According to Statistics Canada, one percent of the population of B.C. and 3.5 percent of Canadians identify as Black. This population, as well as Indigenous populations, are often disproportionately targeted by police. 

Black households are 3.6 times more likely to be food insecure than White households and 36.6% of Black children live in food insecure households. A ten year study released in 2019 found that overall, nearly half of First Nations families struggle to put food on the table.

Growing Chefs’ vision is a world with healthy, just, sustainable food practices. We believe we aren’t effectively enacting this vision if we don’t actively contribute to the work to bring down the injustices and inequities in our society. 

We acknowledge that healthy, just food systems cannot exist without economic, social, and political justice on a societal level. Growing Chefs! intends to do the work to become better allies and vocal anti-racists, not just for today and this week, but on an ongoing and continuous basis. 

We are grateful for all of the support from our community for our work to teach kids where food comes from and support increasing access to healthy food. At this time, we encourage people to direct their energy and support toward organizations that are working to dismantle systems of Anti-Black racism and support the Black community.

Here is a list of organizations to consider. If you have others to suggest, please let us know.

Additionally, this is a list of local Black owned restaurants and food related businesses to support in Metro Vancouver. Again, if you know of more (and as more are established), please share them with us! We will happily keep this list updated.

We will continue to share learning resources both internally and externally and encourage you to share with us. Here are some useful resources we have been reading and following this week:

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Getting Back to our Roots with Food Traditions: Part 4

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We hope you enjoy this food tradition from the home of Amanda, our Program Manager.

Every year for the past 5 years, during the first week of January, my partner and I have hosted a large Ukrainian Christmas Dinner for as many of our friends as we are physically able to fit in our little home. It has become quite the event, not just for us but for those of our guests who look forward to it and come each year. We spend two days preparing everything using the knowledge and skills my Mom and my Grandma taught me and from my exploring of a cookbook I have inherited from my Grandma with traditional Ukranian recipes, in which she has of course, added her own notes and corrections in the margins. There is only one rule for guests that are attending this feast, no one is allowed to bring anything but their appetites- it is a full meal prepared and cooked by us for them and there is no shortage of food or drink to go around. 

The menu keeps expanding as I explore more traditional Ukrainian foods and recipes but every year the meal always includes:

Kutia - a sweet wheat dish that is central to a traditional Ukrainian Christmas Eve dinner

Borsch - a bright red beet soup 

Varenyky (pierogies) - a Ukrainian dumpling filled with either potato, cottage cheese, plum, sauerkraut, poppy seeds, berries, or raisins (we typically make a cheese, caramelized onion and potato filling)

Holubtsi (cabbage rolls) - Boiled cabbage leaves filled with rice or beans, mushrooms, and onions. My family usually added ground beef or pork when I was growing up but traditionally these were vegetarian at least for Christmas Eve dinner when no meat was to be eaten.

Nalysnyky - a sweet crepe filled with cottage cheese and dill ( and one of my favourite dishes!)

Kolach - a beautiful braided sweet bread with a crispy crust

Pickled vegetables

Sauerkraut

This is a new tradition that we have started and made as our own. It’s been a way for me to explore more of my Ukrainian heritage through food and hosting the meal really comes from the tradition I grew up with of feeding others and, of course, a love and appreciation of handmade, from-scratch Ukrainian food. Growing up, pierogies and cabbage rolls were always an inclusion at every holiday dinner. Christmas. Easter. Thanksgiving. It didn’t matter if there was a turkey or a ham (or both), it didn't matter how many sides were a part of the meal, there were always pierogies and cabbage rolls somewhere on the table and it was usually one of the first dishes of the meal that was eaten.  

There is something very special about feeding others and it was always something my family was always happy to do. My Grandma always had a fresh made pot of borsch for me whenever I visited. It was about a six hour drive to where she lived and no matter what time I got in at, there was always food that she had made just for me waiting. As soon as I got in the door I could smell the sweet beet aroma from the pot on the stove and after hugs and general greetings she would usher me to the table (usually commenting I was too skinny and needed to eat more) and put a full steaming hot bowl of her borsch down in front of me. This feeding others and hosting friends was a tradition in my home growing up as well. My sister and I were always able to invite friends to join for dinners, especially during holidays when I was in university and many of my friends were far from their own families. They were always invited and welcome at our table.   

Hosting a gathering of our friends and providing them with a hearty meal is how I have chosen to carry on these traditions and making it entirely out of those Ukrainian dishes I grew up with is my own way of exploring and staying connected to my family’s heritage. It isn’t necessarily difficult food to make, but it is time and labour-intensive with many steps involved, and the making of pierogies and cabbage rolls in particular is always a collaborative effort. I still like to help my mom fill and roll the cabbage leaves whenever I am home and she is making them. 

For me, food is meant to be shared with others, including the experience of making it. This is a tradition my partner and I carry on as we set aside a weekend to spend together preparing these dishes to host our annual dinner, stock our freezer, or prepare the dishes to deliver to friends. Even after a few years of making them, we continue to refine our pierogi pinching and cabbage rolling skills, I still do not know how my Grandma got her cabbage rolls so neatly and tightly wrapped. We like to play around a little with the filling recipes, but I definitely stick pretty close to the recipes from my Grandma, as being able to make these foods helps me continue to feel connected to her since her passing.

Ten “School Skills” Kids Can Learn at Home While Cooking

10 “School Skills” Kids Can Learn at Home While Cooking

 “Mom, I’m doubling this recipe” my almost 8 year old kid says as she mixes pancake mix with water, oil and eggs. “Great, go for it!” I say nonchalantly. Inside my head I’m doing a little happy dance. She read the directions on the box (language), gathered the items that she needed (following directions), measured ingredients (math) and doubled the recipe (more math). All of this is happening with a big smile on her face - she doesn’t know it, but she is learning. 

As we enter the eighth week of at-home learning in BC, we are using some of our time to learn in the kitchen. We don’t have a lesson plan, but we are taking the time to talk more about concepts when they come up (what does a 1/3 of a cup really mean? How does baking soda work?) and exploring some food questions we don’t normally take the time to consider (where does the name ‘caesar salad’ come from?). We are eagerly anticipating the return of school (as early as next week for some schools), but for now we are busy doing some hands-on learning at home and producing some tasty results.

Cooking can teach children (and adults too!) so many great skills. Here are a few examples:

LANGUAGE

  • Reading, writing, and verbal communication through recipes.

  • Increasing vocabulary and introducing children to other languages (sauté is French, bagel is Yiddish, etc.).

GEOGRAPHY AND CULTURE

  • Exploring where different types of foods are from and the diets of different cultures.

  • Mapping the food miles of a meal, and the path food must travel to our plate.

AGRICULTURE AND SUSTAINABILITY

  • Learning about how and where different foods grow.

  • Discussing food miles.

  • Understanding how to reduce waste (both packaging and food waste).

MATH

  • Following a recipe includes counting, fractions, and measuring.

  • Many kitchen skills relate to shapes and spatial reasoning (cutting, plating).

  • Opportunities to introduce budgeting.

SCIENCE

  • Learning about parts of the plant and parts of an animal (cuts of meat).

  • Making observations and exploring food using our five senses.

  • Opportunities for experimenting and making predictions.

  • Chemistry: physical and chemical reactions in the kitchen (bread rising, bread to toast, emulsification, etc.). 

HISTORY

  • Learning what people ate in the past and why.

  • Opportunities to explore different food preparation methods and tools, and how this has impacted our diet.

HEALTH AND SAFETY

  • Understanding nutrition, food safety, and cleanliness.

CREATIVITY

  • Exploring new foods.

  • Creating recipes.

  • Using food as art (plating). 

SOCIAL SKILLS

  • Learning responsibility, cooperation, sharing, self-esteem, and patience.

AND, CONFIDENCE!

Growing Chefs! at Home: Lesson 8

Afton and Penny are back to talk all about salad! In this week's lesson you will learn what a recipe is, how to make a salad dressing from scratch and how mustard works as a magic emulsifier. You will also learn how to put together a salad that is full of all the good stuff your body needs to stay healthy and energized. 

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For this lesson we recommend that kids and adults watch the video to get a basic idea of how a salad dressing and salad are made. Later, with the help of an adult, kids can make their own dressing and salad if they like. We have included our recipe for our Honey Vinaigrette and our recipe for Nutritious Salad below. These recipes will work with most types of vinegar, oil, greens and vegetables so use what you have at home and be creative. Please remember to closely supervise kids when they are working in the kitchen. 

Afton and Penny are back to talk all about SALAD! In this week's lesson you will learn what a recipe is, how to make a salad dressing from scratch and how mu...

Related Activities:

Make a Salad at Home

Our recipes for A Nutritious Salad & Honey Vinaigrette Salad Dressing 

Parts of a Recipe Video and Worksheet

Afton and Penny are back to tell us what a recipe is and teach us the different parts of a recipe. Head over to our blog at - to find a fun recipe building a...

Get familiar with the different parts of a recipe by matching each recipe section to the correct title in this cut and paste puzzle exercise.


Choose Your Own Adventure Recipe: Salad Dressing Worksheet

Make your own recipe for salad dressing. You choose the ingredients you like and write the recipe using our template.

Read: The Secret Weapon

A nutrition themed story about how a humble salad can give a soccer team the energy it needs to defeat their biggest rival. 

Thank you for joining us in the kitchen today. We hope you enjoy this tasty lesson! You can find this new online content here on our website, and we are making announcements about it on our social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). 

Thank you so much for your patience while we reinvent ourselves and our programs.


Identifying Soil Types: Becoming a Soil-ologist Activity

This week, Christine from our team has been talking all about soil and composting! If you missed her lesson on the components of soil and the importance of composting you can find it here in our Growing Chefs! at Home Lesson 7 post.

For a fun science experiment today we are going to explore the soil in our own gardens to see if we can learn more about the different components of this soil and see if we can identify different soil types just like a soil scientist!

In this activity, kids will learn about the different components that make up soil, and how to identify various soil types. It is important to be able to identify your soil type so that you are able to grow the plants that prefer that environment. If you don’t have the correct soil type to grow the plants that you want to grow, then you can add the nutrients and mix in additional soil content to make the perfect mix for your plants’ needs. You’ll notice that your seed packs often list the growing conditions for the different vegetables you are planting, see below images under the “growing” section.

Learning Objectives For This Activity:

  • Understand the basic components of healthy, nutritious soil

  • Identify the main soil types 

  • Learn about why we need to examine our soil and that different plants prefer different types of soil

What is Soil?

Soil is a combination of water, air, minerals, and organic matter. Soil is at the top layer of the earth’s surface and can be thought of as a living thing, and as the ‘skin’ of the earth. People often refer to soil as dirt, but there is an important difference. Dirt is soil that has been misplaced on Earth, and no longer has any life left to feed plants. Dirt is something we can find under our finger-nails, or on our clothes after playing outside. 

Soil Types:

Clay Soil: Soil with a high clay content is considered a ‘heavy’ soil that is made up of tiny particles that can not be seen by your eye without a microscope. This type of soil has a smooth texture, which tells us that the tiny particles are packed very closely together and therefore the water drains through clay soils very slowly. Clay soil holds water so tightly, that it is hard for the plants to get a nice drink of water. 

You can tell if you have clay soil if you roll it into a ball in your hand, and the soil will hold its shape. 

Plants that like clay soil:

  • Brassicas: cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts.  

  • Some tall growing vegetables: beans, peas, and corn like tightly packed clay soil to help anchor their roots.

  • Leafy greens: kale, chard, etc.

  • Squash and pumpkins.

Sandy Soil: Sandy soil has small pieces of minerals that you can see with your eyes, and feel with your hands. Because this type of soil has texture that you can feel, and therefore tells us that there is space between the pieces of sand. This shows us that it allows water to drain through it quickly, which is important for plants that do not like to sit in water, and like to dry out in between having their drink of water. When soil allows for water to move through it quickly, that also means that nutrients move through the soil quickly as well. This would mean that in sandy soils, it may be hard for plants to soak up the nutrients. Sandy soils hold heat well, which helps many seeds grow in the Spring. 

Plants that like sandy soil:

  • Root crops: potatoes, carrots, radishes, turnips, beets etc.

  • Bulb plants: onions, garlic, etc.

Loamy Soil: Loamy soil contains high levels of organic matter, and is the ideal type of soil for growing mostly all fruits and vegetables. Loamy soil is well-balanced with sand, clay, silt and organic content. Having a nice mix of all of these elements gives plants all the benefits of each soil type, without many of the disadvantages. 

Remember, just like it is important for us to have a balanced meal with all of the food groups, soil should also have a well-balanced mix of ingredients (sand, clay, organic matter) as soil is the main source of food for plants. 

Soil-ologist Science Activity

Items needed:

  • 1+ Glass Jars

  • 2 or 3 soil sample(s) from your yard or garden

  • Water

Activity Instructions:

For a fun science experiment today we are going to explore the soil in our own gardens to see if we can learn more about the different components of this soi...

1. Collect soil samples from as many different locations as you want in your growing space, for each sample you will need one glass jar (soil samples should be collected from 20cm deep in ground).

2. Place one soil sample into each jar.

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3. Fill your with water, and place it on a flat surface.

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4. Let the soil settle for a minimum of one hour.

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5. Examine and identify the soil content using the guidelines below!

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Here we can see that in:

  • Soil Sample #1: The water is murky, and the soil has settled at the bottom, which tells us that there is heavy content in there such as sand and clay

  • Soil Sample #2: The water is pretty clear, and the soil has most of its content at the top, but also some has settled at the bottom. This tells us that there is lots of organic matter, but also has some sand content.

  • Soil Sample #3: The water is murky, and has soil floating at the top, but also has some that has settled at the bottom. This tells us that this soil sample has a nice balance of lots of organic matter, sand, and some clay content. 

Note: Soil Sample #3 is potting mix from the store that is specially made to have a nice balance of sand, clay and organic matter.

LOAMY SOIL: Large organic particles will float on top

CLAY SOIL: Fine clay and silt particles will settle in the middle

SANDY SOIL: Sand and small stones will settle at the bottom

If water is clear after soil settles: SANDY SOIL TYPE

If water is murky and cloudy after soil settles: CLAYEY SOIL TYPE

What soil type is in your jar?

Understanding Compost: Creating your own Soil-arium

This week is all about soil and the importance of composting.

Do you compost at home? Have you ever thought about what is actually happening in your compost? Christine teaches us how to make our own soil-arium at home so we can observe and track the decomposition process that occurs when we compost organic matter turning it into nutrient-rich soil for our plants! Join us!

Why is Composting so Important?

Composting is an important process that recycles the nutrients in food - to be reused to grow more food. When we throw our food scraps into the garbage we lose those nutrients forever. Not only are we throwing away very important nutrients, but food scraps in the landfill release something called methane gas which contributes to global warming. By composting, we are saving valuable nutrients that we can use to grow more nutritious food - and we are also helping to protect our environment.

A great example of composting takes place on the forest floor! We don’t see people going to clean up all the fallen leaves, trees, branches, etc. This is because decomposers (living organisms) such as worms, fungi, beetles, and bacteria help break down these materials. By creating a soil-arium or compost, we are building a home for decomposers to do their important work! Even if you can’t see these organisms, they are there and busy helping to create soil for us. It is important we give these living organisms the things they need to survive!

Learning Objectives

  • Be able to explain what composting is and why it is important

  • Understand how to start a basic composting system

  • Learn about the life cycle of food

Activity Preparation

Items needed:

Set-up

Little to no set-up is required. Find a sunny windowsill spot where the soil-arium can be observed throughout the composting process (approximately 12 weeks).

Activity Instructions

1. Add a small handful of dirt to the bottom of your glass jar.

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2. Add a layer of shredded newspaper or cardboard.

3. Add a layer of kitchen scraps.

4. Add a layer of organic yard debris.

5. Repeat this order of layering until your jar is almost full to the top.

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6. Add your water and then cap the top with holes poked in the lid.

7. Draw a line to mark the top of your original composting pile.

8. Add a little bit of water as needed, and stir daily to provide oxygen and move around the bacteria so they can find new food.

9. Every two weeks, draw a line to mark the new top as the composting process continues.

Observing Changes in Your Soil-Arium

The composting process will be different with each person’s soil-arium. The composting process can take several months, so we can make some observations during this time.

Measuring/Tracking Compost:

  1. On Day 1 of your soil-arium, mark and measure the height from the bottom of the container to the top of the pile of compost.

  2. Every week or two, you can re-measure, and note changes in the height of the compost as things decompose.

  3. How much water are you adding?

  4. How big are the pieces of food scraps that you have added to your compost? We can help speed up the composting process by breaking down what we add into smaller pieces.

  5. How heavy is your soil-arium?

  6. You may want to try making some predictions of what may happen in your soil-arium over time.

Making Observations of the Composting Process:

  1. You may want to try creating a journal to record and keep track of what you have added to your soil-arium.

  2. What changes are you noticing with your soil-arium? After a few weeks, can you still see and identify all the food scraps that you have added? 

  3. Have some of the food scraps decomposed more quickly than others?

  4. Can you see any flies, worms, or other insects in your soil-arium?

  5. How does your soil-arium smell? Adding more dry browns to the top layer in the Soil-arium will help it from getting stinky! Adding more browns will slow down the composting process, but it also helps from ‘drowning’ the compost with too much moisture - which can kill the living organisms responsible for composting.

  6. How does the texture of it feel in your hand? Remember, healthy compost should have a similar moisture to a wrung out sponge.

Compost Recipe

Remember that your compost is a living thing, and it requires our love and attention to make it thrive - just like a pet! It needs a balanced diet of browns and greens, air, and water (as needed). 

Now, it is your turn to go find some browns and greens to add to your soil-arium!

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Growing Chefs! at Home: Lesson 7

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Growing Chefs! staff member Christine is here to talk to you about the basics of soil and composting and why they are important for growing our food, and Chef Brennen from our volunteer team brings us into his backyard to introduce us to some of his friends.

Plus we’ve got two fun science experiments you can try at home to explore more about soil and compost!

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Getting ready for exploring soil and composting - For this lesson, all you need is is your thinking cap!

Today we will talk about Soil and Composting. This is an introductory video to understanding what soil is, and why composting is so important. Not only for environmental reasons, but also for the added benefits of using compost as a delicious food for your plants at home. 

Now we know a little more about what components make up healthy soil, what compost is and why composting is important!

Below we have a great video for you with another of our incredible classroom volunteers - Chef Brennen! Brennen brings us into his backyard and introduces us to his worm farm!

Our Spring program is aimed at kids in grades 1, 2, and 3, but folks of all ages will likely learn something new! If it’s possible for an adult to be around during these lessons, that would be great. Our growing chefs might need their help a couple of times. We will let you know in the video when there are good moments to offer some help.

Related Activities:

Understanding Compost - Build your own at home Soil-arium and explore how compost breaks down creating nutrient-rich soil for our plants. Full activity outline and video found here.

Identifying Soil Type - Become a soil-ologist and examine the soil in your own yard and garden. Learn about the different components of soil and find out what grows best in each type of soil. Full activity outline and instructional video found here.

You can find this new online content here on our website, and we are making announcements about it on our social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). 

Thank you so much for your patience while we reinvent ourselves and our programs.