Aviva Community Fund provided £200 of match funding
Learn to Cook and Eat Well at Herons Dale School
Shoreham By Sea, England, United Kingdom
Aim
To create an inclusive teaching kitchen in which children with special educational needs can learn, create and enjoy food.
WE ARE THE FRIENDS OF HERONS DALE AND WE ARE RAISING FUNDS TO CREATE AN INCLUSIVE TEACHING KITCHEN.
Who we are...
Herons Dale School provides special education for students with a wide range of learning difficulties and associated special needs. The school admits boys and girls aged 4 – 11 years who have a Statement of Special Educational Needs or an Educational, Health and Care Plan . We have an above average number of students eligible for pupil premium, meaning they come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
At Herons Dale our aim is to provide bespoke learning opportunities for all our pupils, ensuring that each individual is enabled to make maximum progress in all areas of learning. We have a ‘growth mindset.’ We have no fixed expectation of what any of our pupils can achieve and set aspirational but realistic targets for all pupils. We ensure that we maximise each child’s learning opportunities and that they have access to a broad and balanced curriculum. We believe that learning about food, how to prepare it and the principles of a healthy diet are vital life skills.
Our Vision
We are crowdfunding towards the supply and installation of a specially designed and flexible teaching kitchen; please help us to create a modern inclusive teaching kitchen for our pupils.
Why?
Our current facilities severely restrict our ambition to teach all of our children about healthy eating and nutrition at the appropriate level to their learning and/or physical disability. In our current cookery room, only half a class can access the room at any one time, meaning a number of classes choose to undertake activities in their classroom before cooking in the cookery room.
We plan to create a modern inclusive teaching kitchen, adjacent to our growing garden, where children will learn to cook healthy food using the ingredients that they have grown. The new cookery room will be twice the size of the current space as we plan to knock down a wall and fully utilise the adjoining space as well as the current space. It will allow for 12 children, plus adults, in the room.
There will be an island, which can be height adjusted so that our wheelchair users can access the kitchen at the same time as the rest of their class. The space will also have accessible equipment, including a dishwasher and an oven with hob. This will provide an active learning environment where, through learning about cookery and where food comes from, children can also see science in action and enhance their maths and literacy skills.
The new teaching kitchen will also enable us to offer high quality food education workshops to the parents and wider community. We have well established links with our families and our local community, enabling us to promote and encourage participation in said workshops.
What difference will your support make?
Our pupils have a wide range of learning difficulties and associated special needs. This project will have many positive outcomes for their education and well-being including:
- Skills for life: giving the critical life skill that will help our children to feed themselves and others healthy food, now and in the future, potentially halting, and even reversing, the potential of diet related illnesses.
- Healthy living: creating a space to learn and apply the principles of healthy eating and nutrition.
- Improved self-esteem and confidence: develop independence as well as social and communication skills in an environment to feel proud of.
Almost 20 per cent of children are obese by the time they leave primary school, and families on lower incomes tend to be the most disadvantaged in terms of their culinary knowledge and skills. You will be helping to teach children about nutritious diets and giving them important life skills, thereby potentially halting – and even reversing – the growth of diet-related illnesses.
This project successfully funded on 16th June 2021