Thoughts from our Partners and Parents
Over the years we’ve had the privilege of working with some amazing children, parents and partners. We never take any of them for granted, always strive to be better and work more effectively in our community. On this page we’ve include some testimonials from some of the people we work with. Thank you to everyone one who supplied a testimonial.
We have been working alongside Angie at Creative Chefs since 2019 to provide fun, engaging healthy eating sessions for children, their families and providers of early years and school settings. Our aim has always been to help children engage with a range of healthy foods in a way that is relaxed, creative and allows them to explore at their own pace and to support parents and professionals to discover ways to provide a healthy, low cost range of meals and snacks. Angie achieves this 100%. The sessions are perfectly pitched at putting children in control and communicating key educational messages in a way that is age and stage appropriate and importantly, fun. Angie utilises a huge range of recipes and ingredients to ensure that children attending regular sessions never get bored. Creative Chefs have been a key partner in both the delivery of our Healthy Hub in North Herts which seeks to provide targeted health and wellbeing services direct to families in their local communities and our Household Support Fund food education programme which brings food education directly into educational and childcare settings. From engaging with providers, marketing, delivery and evaluation, Creative Chefs provide a professional high quality service that we hope to continue to engage with for a long time.
I have attended sessions of Creative Chefs and was really impressed with the promotion of a positive attitude to eating and trying healthy food. The recipes are designed to encourage healthy eating using accessible and affordable ingredients. The sessions help children improve their use of vocabulary and maths skills. The children thoroughly enjoyed the sessions and were very keen to engage and become involved. I am delighted to have been able to support this worthwhile project through my Locality Budget.
The thing with Angie is that she understands child development so that's why I feel the session is much more than just a session about cooking. Angie enables the children to think about healthy eating. She gives them that sensory experience so it’s fascinating at a young age to see the children really focusing on all five senses, children trying foods that they would never try at home and really expanding that palette of foods.
Over six weeks, children explored healthy eating and the importance of making good food choices. They learned which foods help their bodies grow strong and stay healthy. Through hands-on activities, they practised using utensils safely and confidently, preparing a variety of ingredients. In the final week, each child designed their own healthy snack, showing a clear understanding of nutritious ingredients. They were proud to take their creations home each week and were excited to try making them again with their families. These have been truly important skills for our children to reinforce healthy eating, but to also enable them to be more independent in their ability and skill to be able to make dishes for themselves. For the context of our school, this is really important. We had incredibly positive feedback from pupil voice. Our children really enjoyed this experience and opportunity. Parents also shared their delight at the foods they had prepared and taken home. A huge thank you to Angie for being an advocate of this for our pupils. You made a huge difference to our community.
Great with the children, good knowledge of food and nutrition. Children loved the rainbow pasta. EB went home and made her own rainbow pasta pot with pink food dye.
Creative approach to teaching children how to eat well by eating a rainbow. It is so important that young children can recognise how to keep themselves healthy in a child friendly way.
TB so excited to attend Creative Chefs and lives to cook with Angie.
We enjoyed the class. I was overjoyed to see Eli try different ingredients. Definitely be back.
Liliane has been enjoying your class on Tuesdays. The Pizza went down a treat tonight and I was very impressed that she tried (and now likes!) avocado, so gold star for you!
Thank you for your session today. Nola thoroughly enjoyed herself and it was so good to see her sampling different foods that she won't at home.
All the children thoroughly enjoyed the session, it got them talking about where food comes from and healthy eating choices. They talked about the different vegetables they like. The parents received photos of children taking part in the session and we have received Photos back from some of the children who tried out some of the other recipes in the book. One boy made his family the savoury egg muffins for breakfast one weekend. In art we then created a rainbow of different coloured fruit and vegetables which increased naturally our conversations around food, being healthy, eating a rainbow and that discussion around where food comes from. Next week we are going to planning carrots and tomatoes. We are even experimenting with growing food from off cuts like celery and lettuce. So, your session linked beautifully to our theme learning and has provided lots off further learning for us. It would be fantastic to see your funding continue and have you back next year.