School News: What’s Cooking at Gill St. Bernard’s?
Spring 2023
This article appeared as "What's Cooking?" in the Spring 2023 issue of Independent School.
What better place to get a hands-on learning experience than in the kitchen? That’s what inspired leaders at Gill St. Bernard’s School (NJ) to cook up the idea for the lower school Kitchen Discovery Lab—an innovative, student-centered space designed to provide the youngest learners the chance to explore, experiment, and grow. The lab, which opened this past October thanks to an anonymous donation, allows teachers to create interdisciplinary lesson plans that encourage creative thinking, establish fine motor skills, strengthen group collaboration and social-emotional development, explore cultural connections, and develop essential life skills.
From weighing vegetables from Home Winds, Gill’s on-campus farm, in a math lesson to learning about nutrition and food science in their STREAMS course, the new space centers on students applying abstract concepts through real-world application.
The lab features grow lights and a living lab space for students to study plant growth and use them as ingredients; a smart TV and video cameras, which allows students to follow teacher instructions while focusing on their projects; high-quality essential kitchen equipment; and kitchen walls lined with mosaic tiles made by Gill students from lower school art projects.
Nearly all classes visit the lab for special projects and for lessons that connect cooking and science and offer instruction about nutrition. Students have used the lab for projects ranging from making a Native American-inspired cornbread (with lessons about the culture that created it) to cooking apple turnovers with ingredients from the school’s farm and creating Mexican cuisine during the Day of the Dead.
“The Kitchen Discovery Lab fits hand in hand with our school motto, ‘The World is our Classroom,’ ” says Kyle Armstrong, lower and middle school director.
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