Community Kitchen

  • Teachers at Sunnyside Environmental School integrate gardening and cooking activities throughout the curriculum in kindergarten through eighth grades. We study world cultures and create meals from them, apply mathematical learning to baking, and eat our way through literature. We plant gardens and follow the process of growing food from seed to harvest to feast.

    The Heart of the school

    Staff, parents and students are involved in hands-on learning and experience a deep connection to healthy foods. The heart of the home is the kitchen. The heart of a school should be a kitchen as well. As a community we are dedicated to the idea that preparing and eating food is a greater act than it appears. Community comes together around food, and learning is deep when many hands do the work and many mouths do the tasting.

    In the summer and fall of 2007 our community of teachers and parents worked together to create a large kitchen area appropriate for student learning. We have space for a class to cook together. Using recycled materials and sharing the sink and dishwasher with Nutrition Services allowed us to create kitchen that fits our community values of shared space and thoughtful use of resources.

    A variety of food preparation projects have happened in our kitchen. Some of the activities have included:

    • Middle school students making of bag lunches for a social service organization.
    • Upper elementary students making the breads of the world.
    • Kindergarteners peeling and slicing fresh vegetables
    • First and second graders making stuffed mushrooms as part of studying the forest floor.
    • A middle school class baking to for a bake sale to raise money for the Go Fund.

    Join us in our community kitchen!

    Below are links to documents to help with our cooking projects at our school.

    • If you are a teacher, parent or community volunteer, please refer to our Kitchen Guidelines before beginning a cooking project.
    • For guidelines on using our Cafeteria Kitchen (including instruction on using the commercial dishwasher) refer to the Cafeteria Guidelines.
    • For guidelines on bringing foods from our school garden or Jean’s Farm into the community kitchen, refer to Food Grown in Gardens.

    To volunteer for a cooking project, please contact a teacher or room parent. Volunteers prepare peanut butter and jam sandwiches on Wednesday mornings for our students to purchase at lunch time. To volunteer for this project, email Mia Yang or call her at 503-234-6330.

    We encourage all Community Kitchen volunteers to hold a current Multnomah County Food Handler’s card. Please leave a photocopy of your card in our food handler file box located above the first stove.

    Recipes

    Take a look at our growing recipe collection.

    Thanks

    Our thanks to our parents, staff, SES PTSA, PPS Nutrition Services, the ReBuilding Center and Lowe’s for their generous support for our Community Kitchen, and to Grand Central Baking for their support of our PBJ program.

    More Information

    Coming soon!