Whenever we speak to children in any school one of their favourite activities is always cooking. They especially love sharing what they have made with their families and friends.

Throughout the year we have been busy planting various crops such as tomatoes, radishes, potatoes, carrots herbs and strawberries. 'Growing our own Fruit and Veg' was one of the items in our Eco-Code that was chosen and agreed by the whole school.

The potatoes did suffer from the dry spell we had earlier in the year, the water we had collected in our water butt ran out too so they were not as big as we had hoped. But we still had a few crops that the different classes cooked with. Some of the work is part of science projects with the growth of the plants recorded some of it is after school activities whereby the children have planted things like strawberries in their own time and take responsibility to water them throughout the term. They really do enjoy watching them grow and seeing the fruit ripen.

We do try and put tips in the weekly newsletter encouraging and we have had seed swaps and plantings as part of events like Green Britain Day and fund raising

One of the reasons children like cooking is that they think it is just fun, 'it's not learning'. In fact it is often about English writing instructions, and science with different chemical ingredients reacting and changing. With measuring it is about maths especially if you want to make twice as many as the recipe (its amazing that staff keep finding recipes for the wrong amount all the time!). With decorating there is design in the presentation or decorating of cakes but most of all it is fun.

If you do cook at home chat to your child about the different ingredients and tell them 'why do you add baking powder or yeast'. As they know children have twice as many taste buds as adults so they obviously have different tastes, let them experiment with small amounts of the mixture.

Many thanks to all the donations we had for the garden and the volunteers who come in to help. We always try and remind children the importance of wearing gloves and washing your hands in soap and water after you have been in the garden. We also try and teach them about washing up too!