Kids Cooking Green is an after-school program in the Boston area that teaches children about nutrition and fresh, healthy food. The students cook meals, like eggs in a basket, and ravioli, and bring recipes and samples home to their parents. The emphasis is on locally grown products, so one piece of the program is to introduce the kids to the people who grow food. I’m not a “real” farmer, but I do know all about chickens, so Kids Cooking Green asked me to be part of their program. It’s the perfect match!
I recently taught a group of fourth and fifth graders all about how eggs are made in the hen’s reproductive tract. Then I ask, “do you know where the egg comes out?” No one ever thinks about that part of the process. I pick up my hen, turn her around so they can see her bottom, and show the vent. You can imagine how this age group loves this!
At the end of the program, I talk about feathers and teach how to touch a hen. For many, this is the first time that they’ve seen a real chicken, let alone pet one. The other day eighteen energetic and excited children quietly and gently stroked Amber’s back. Smiles all around.
Information about my school programs is here.
What a fun learning experience for the children!
It’s good to hear about this kind of education- fun for the kids, and teaching an important lesson: food doesn’t simply come ‘from the store’. I was thinking “this is the first time that they’ve seen a real chicken” should read “this is the first time that they’ve seen a live chicken”! :^)
Happy Halloween Everybody!
thank you Terry for making a “difference”
Amber is the perfect school hen! You are doing great work, Terry. I know kids who are shocked and refuse to eat a carrot that has DIRT on it from being freshly harvested. It is a strange world where we are so separated from the care and growth of our food.
I’ve had kids refuse to eat an apple simply because it wasn’t shiny and smooth. It was a ‘bad’ apple! :)
what an important program this is. I have some friends (adults) that wont eat my chickens eggs, for some strange reason to them, if they don’t come from the store, all perfect looking, they are bad, weird, but unfortunately a product of our current culture.
Your comment and Robin’s is so telling. How distant some people are from understanding what good food is.
An important job well done, Terry Golson and Amber.
Even perceptive, mindful people often fail to acknowledge reality, for instance when they are “grossed out” about a picture of a barn cat with its hard-earned meal in its mouth, especially when the meal is *cute* (bunny)… while, on the other hand, these same people manage to dive into some cheapo all-you-can-eat buffet deal (and even return/throw away perfectly good meat when their eyes have been bigger than their bellies) without the smallest thought of what the animals whose meat they’re devouring have been through throughout their (thank goodness short) lives as industrially raised meat or egg producing “machines”.
I like to come here for the knowledge/wisdom, and because here, animals are valued as individual beings worthy of respect and compassion. More power to you, so that you may be heard by many, many more! Thank you.
How exciting for those kids. I bet some good stories were told at home that day.
PS. Love those red shoes!
Terry, we love all of the amazing class visits that Kids Cooking Green has had with you and your birds! You are great and the hand on with a live hen is so wonderful for the children. It makes learning FUN… and then we eat what
we have just learned how to make. What could be better. Kids Cooking Green looks forward to more classes with
you!