Wednesday, January 18

Dear Matilda's Mom

In school right now the curriculum focus for Matilda's class is food. I, of course, cannot help myself and have been offering up lots of ideas and maybe too much "help" to the teacher. She seems to be politely ignoring my efforts to plan a field trip to the farmers market, probably wisely. However, she was quite pleased to welcome me into class yesterday to share a huge variety of produce and talk with the kids about farmers markets. I went totally overboard in my enthusiastic market shopping and brought way more items than we could cover in 30 minutes with 22 rowdy, over-excited kids. I had a blast, but left wondering how they could possibly have absorbed anything from the rushed and disorganized presentation. It also proved to me that I am no match for a kindergarten class. Despite the chaos, the kids all participated eagerly, tried lots of food, and seemed to generally enjoy it. For tasting we cut up purple and white potatoes, turnips, fennel, cucumbers, cauliflower, radishes, purple and white carrots, pommelo, blood oranges and mandarins. 

As I picked Matilda up today she was bursting at the seams to share the thank you notes that each child in her class made for me. It was a fantastic treat to read through and see all the drawings. I have included below a few drawings and some of the notes (spelling corrected for your reading ease) written from the children.

Dear Matilda's mom,
Thank you for bringing the carrots and the cauliflower. I really liked them. 

Dear Matilda's mom,
Thank you for bringing in the vegetables. I love what you did because I love you.

Dear Matilda's mom, 
Thank you for the vegetables.

Dear Matilda's mom,
Thank you for the food but I only liked 1 kind of food and that food was the blood orange.























Dear Matilda's mom,
Thank you for the vegetables because I like the vegetables because the vegetables is healthy. 

Dear Matilda's mom,
Thank you for showing the vegetables. I like learning about vegetables because I like vegetables.























Dear Matilda's mom, 
Thank you for giving all of the food. I love you.
  
Dear Mama,
Thank you for the fennel I liked. It was yummy because it tasted like licorice. Matilda
Note that in Matilda's picture above she depicted herself with a big, raised blue hand. She actually did a fairly poor job of raising her hand and waiting to be called on. I suppose if your mom is in class covering all your favorite veggies it might be hard to remember that little rule. It is also worth noting that Matilda ate 2 raw potatoes, 1 big raw turnip and 1/2 a bulb of fennel after the presentation yesterday. At least we won't have a problem eating our way through all the extra produce I purchased for the kids to manhandle!

This picture below is probably my favorite because it really captures the mobbed feeling I had at the end of the class when all the hands were clamoring up at me for the last few sample items I had on my tray. Maybe those sad faces indicate that not everyone got to sample as much as they would have liked?



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