Embodying Soil: A Case Study in Food Education and Child Agency

Our Ethos Food Programme began through an exploratory autoethnographic journey centred on early childhood, food learning, and connection with nature (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011).

What started as small, everyday experiences of planting seeds, exploring allotments, cooking, observing seasonal change, and spending time outdoors gradually evolved into a deeper reflection on how children learn through sensory engagement, food growing, and direct contact with the natural world.

As these experiences unfolded, important questions emerged:
What happens when children are given regular opportunities to work with soil and grow food?
How does outdoor food learning influence wellbeing, confidence, curiosity, and relationships with eating?
What kinds of learning become possible when children engage with nature in practical and meaningful ways?

These reflections became the foundation for the development of our integral food programme — a holistic approach that combines food education, allotment learning, ecological awareness, sensory exploration, and wellbeing.

Central to the programme is the belief that children learn most meaningfully when they become active agents in the learning process rather than passive recipients of information (Freire, 1970). Instead of receiving knowledge only through explanation, children engage directly with food systems through growing, harvesting, tasting, cooking, composting, and caring for living environments.

When children have access to real, lived experiences in nature, knowledge becomes embodied. They do not only “learn about” concepts intellectually; they live them. This embodied learning happens without the expectation that understanding must always be demonstrated at a purely academic or verbal level. In this way, learning becomes more accessible and inclusive for different ways of thinking, sensing, and knowing.

When children interact with the real world in this way, opportunities emerge for meaning-making and transformation. Experiences are not fixed or passive; they become dynamic. Children begin to reinterpret what they see, touch, and do, and through this process new meanings are created. The world itself becomes something that can be understood, questioned, and reshaped. In this sense, children are not only learning within the world, but actively participating in transforming both their understanding of it and their sense of themselves within it — becoming active subjects rather than passive observers.

At the same time, children are also supported in classroom-based theoretical and intellectual learning. The strength of the programme lies in the connection between these spaces. Knowledge gained in class is brought into the allotment, and experiences from the allotment return to the classroom. In this way, children complete a full cycle of learning — moving between theory, experience, reflection, and application (Kolb, 1984).

This integration allows children to construct understanding in a way that is not limited to one form of intelligence. Instead, they develop a layered and imaginative relationship with knowledge — one that is grounded in reality but also expands into creativity, interpretation, and possibility. The allotment becomes more than a growing space; it becomes a living classroom where children develop agency, responsibility, and confidence through hands-on participation. Learning is experiential, embodied, and deeply connected to everyday life.

Alongside this practice, wider research continues to reinforce the importance of children’s connection with natural environments. A Finnish study on biodiversity interventions in early childhood settings found that regular exposure to biodiverse environments can positively influence immune regulation and microbiome development in children (Roslund et al., 2020). Reporting in The Guardian also highlights how contact with soil and natural materials supports microbial diversity and children’s health outcomes (The Guardian, 2025).

Within our programme, these ideas are experienced in simple but powerful ways:
children harvesting vegetables they have grown themselves, trying foods directly from the garden, working collaboratively outdoors, and developing confidence through practical responsibility and care. At a time when many children are increasingly disconnected from food systems and the natural world, this work explores how allotment-based learning and food education can help re-establish those connections in meaningful and lasting ways.

At the heart of the programme is a simple belief: children learn deeply when they are given opportunities to touch, grow, taste, explore, and care for the living world around them.