With our new classroom arrangement, we now have a new central kitchen island space available that we have been using for our water station. Four friends can sit around the island and enjoy water and conversation in a relaxed fashion. We are building on this idea of independent water breaks and are adding a new aspect: Tami’s “experiment” on vegetable consumption.

This week we have had fresh cut vegetables available for the children for the duration of morning and afternoon until pick up times. We continue to do our normal breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack times, so this is ADDITIONAL snacking.

As the week has progressed, a few things have become clear:

• In absence of other foods, the children eat ALOT of fresh veggies without any dips or enticement.
• We feel like this is the type of thing that the children should be snacking on and don’t care about the volume of veggies they eat or when they eat them.
• The cost of keeping them in veggies all day long may prove to be the only hindrance to the longevity of this idea.

Since they really can’t “overeat” fresh vegetables, I would like to cultivate this heathy habit by not policing them. Simply put, we have bowl of veggies and they can eat their fill throughout the morning and afternoon. Right now it is novel, so interest is really high but it will taper some as they get used to it. Then, they will eat the vegetables when they are hungry and need the nutrition.

Since this is in addition to the promised WF meals, I would like to ask WF families to support this new idea (which needs a cool name?). Do we have any families that are so on board with the idea that they would be willing to provide a weekly commitment of fresh vegetables? Examples: 2lb bag of carrots, 6 cucumbers, red/yellow peppers, big bag of green beans, big bag of pea pods, broccoli, cauliflower, etc.

Please let me know! If I can get parent support, I think this will be something very beneficial to the health of our children.

From this morning:

Nate brought in a movement game to share…

Miss Laurie led the children on an alphabet hunt. This was followed by an art activity of using our sandpaper letters to make letter rubbings in a large letter collage.

While driving us teachers batty with is tranportabilityness (yes, a made up word!) the moon sand is a huge hit with everyone!

Some children chose to use foam letters and glue sticks to make letter collages. Miss Tami had a opportunity to discuss the different letter shapes with several of our younger children. (And why glue sticks make your fingers so sticky!)

Miss Melinda led the children on an imagination art exploration. She filled a plate with objects and the children were to decide if anything looked like anything other than it was. It was a creative conversation!

The children read and danced to chicka chicka boom. They then climbed on the coconut tree (the jungle gym). This was followed by a letter search.

For breakfast we had whole wheat english muffins with fresh pears. For lunch we had toasted whole grain flat bread filled with cream cheese/cheddar cheese, mixed vegetables and pears/mandarin oranges. For snack we will have some homemade pumpkin bread and raisins.

Have a great day!

Tami