Growing Chefs! Ontario: Kindergarten Kitchen

What to expect: We are thrilled to offer a new in-school program for Kindergarten classes to explore food waste in a fun and engaging way. Our team of gardeners, chefs or educators will come right to your classroom, bringing with us all the equipment, ingredients and supplies necessary to deliver a fun, hands-on, experiential food education lesson. Students will have fun making salsa and guacamole to enjoy with tortilla chips. While they enjoy eating their snack, students will learn how to ​“reuse their foods” and regrow the green onions ends and avocado pits they used in the recipe (these can be grown in the classroom window afterwards as a fun science experiment). We will also bring with us our portable worm composter to learn where the rest of our food scraps go. The class ends with a relaxing plant stretch to wrap everything up.

Date and time: Each class is 1 hour in length, exact times to be chosen by schools. Registration for the 2024/2025 school year has not opened, but you can join the waitlist at the link below to be notified when registration opens.

Grades:FDK only. A minimum of 3 classes are required to participate in your school. We will book all 3 classes on the same day, and additional classes on the following day. At this time, this program is limited to London schools only.

Pricing: $10/​student. For teachers that anticipate financial barriers to having students participate, please contact christy@​growingchefsontario.​ca to explore subsidy options.

School Champion: Each participating school requires a School Champion. The School Champion will coordinate between Growing Chefs and the participating classrooms. The School Champion can be a principal, vice-principal, teacher, or other school staff.

School Champion Responsibilities:

- Distributing lesson plan to all teachers ahead of time

- Creating a schedule for 3 classrooms/​day. We will provide a template for this schedule.

- Arranging storage space for Growing Chefs! equipment and an appropriate space for cleaning equipment and washing dishes between classes (usually a staff room)

- Ensuring that all relevant accommodations needed, medical information, dietary restrictions and allergies that may be present in the classrooms are passed on to our team.

- Participating in the project evaluation process.


Is photo permission required to participate in the School Project? Allowing the Growing Chefs! team to take photos during class lessons is not a requirement, however photos are a fantastic way to build sponsor and community engagement. Whenever possible, we hope that schools will share photo permission with us. Please note that no student without granted photo permission will be excluded from any activities.

What is the evaluation process? Evaluation is an important part of our program development. It is also useful for reporting to current funders and recruiting new ones. At the end of the program, School Champions will be sent a quick online survey to distribute to each teacher.

Food Allergies: Our team is highly experienced in managing dietary restrictions. Do not let a dietary concern prevent your child from participating in our programming. Get in contact with our staff team and we’ll do our best to make appropriate accommodations. If a participant has a life-threatening allergy, please read our official Allergen Statement here and let us know if you have any questions.