Dayboro Community Kindergarten & Preschool’s News
Lessons in Sustainability – never too young to learn! The 44 children attending the Dayboro Community Kindy are learning to care for themselves and the environment with a focus on sustainability that is seeing them growing fruit and vegetables and taking care with what goes in their lunchboxes.
The Kindy’s thriving vege patch, lovingly tended by the classes, is growing tomatoes, beans, lettuce, strawberries, spinach, cucumber and corn, along with a range of fruit.
Kindy Director Robyn Hoban said benefits of the garden were enormous.
“The children are learning about sustainability and where food comes from, and are starting to explore new tastes,” Robyn said.
These new tastes sometimes include adding their ‘home-grown’ lettuce to jam or honey sandwiches, as well as getting to try different foods like custard apple and ice-cream bean from the Kindy’s trees.
The sustainability message also has the children thinking about their own lunchbox choices, with the Kindy aiming for ‘litter-less’ lunches focusing more on fresh foods and less on pre-packaged items.
Robyn said that while this approach supported the Kindy’s healthy eating philosophy, it also carried an important lesson.
“The important message for the children is that they can do something that’s good for themselves and for the environment – it’s an important connection for them to make,” she said.
The Kindy will soon have more space in which to cultivate sustainable gardens and learn about nature, thanks to a $20,509 grant from the Gambling Community Benefit Fund which will be used to update and extend fencing.
As well as paying for new playground fencing, the grant will enable the Kindy to fence an adjoining block which it acquired last year, meaning more learning space for Dayboro area children.
The Dayboro Kindy kids, with Director Robyn Hoban, get their new vegetable patch ready for planting.
