Garden News, Review & Giveaway!

I wrote this earlier in the week–

It summed up that day... and many days that followed. I LOVE kindergarten but I swear I spend as much time putting away as planning and getting out!

Thanks to Kacey for the Five for Friday linky– a super good way to find teacher bloggers!

2.  Okay, so that image up above was my number 1. I'm a bit pooped as I work on this tonight.

Ta-Da! For those of you who follow, you'll know I had plans to make some Earth Day hats, and WE DID!

This one's flower drooped to allow for incognito viewing.

They are made entirely out of recycled-reused materials: brown paper grocery store bag, white plastic shopping bag, and scraps I collected over two weeks. In this up close and personal shot you can see we used bingo markers for added color. The rose is just the plastic bag, curled up and stapled, with added permanent marker color... yes, Target makes the best bags for this and OF COURSE I could come up with enough without even asking parents. 

DH Jonathan (Dear Husband, not Dumb Head as he insists) helped me turn the grocery bags inside out so you couldn't see the branding, and after twenty he couldn't resist trying one on himself. 

My class looks like a bunch of Unknown Comics as we take a blog shot... I don't even know if the kids know what a "blog shot" is... but they know I don't want to see their faces if I ask for it. And I bet many of you are too young to even know who the Unknown Comic was!

I'm telling you those hats were a BIG HIT. Not only with the kidpeople but people throughout the building. We did a parade through the fifth graders' room, and went Earth Day Caroling through the building boasting ... showing off ... sharing our hats. Our carol was the recycling song I posted about last week.

And what is she drinking? I thought you'd never ask. Actually she's not drinking...

3. ... which leads to number 3, our dirt snack. Everyone knows about dirt pudding with gummy worms, right? Well, a made up a variation with these ingredients from the dollar store. I was inspired by all the gardening we've been doing in the new school garden, and thought Earth Day would be a great day to try it out. 

You can get EVERYTHING from the dollar store for under ten bucks.

I crushed the sandwich cookies so that they looked like dirt and filled the cute flower cups with this "soil" almost to the top. Then I put out the sunflower seeds, edamame, nuts, and pumpkin seeds (which didn't make it into the picture.) The kids poked their finger down in the crumbs to make holes in the dirt, then dropped in the seeds.

Apparently some of them didn't realize that the dirt was cookies. When I said, "Go ahead, take a mouthful," and then did so myself, oh my, you should have seen their faces!  One Little said, "Do we HAVE to eat it?? My mom won't let me eat dirt!"  hmmm... how does he know this.... I assured them the "dirt" was cookies, and to convince them this was a fun treat, I handed out the gummy worms. I meant to give out the popcorn, too, as it is another example of seeds we eat, but we were all so taken with what was in our cups that I forgot. We'll have to have it another day. I bet they'll hate that.

I have to tell you, we had just been outside planting, with the kids poking their fingers in dirt to make holes for sunflower seeds, and this little made up treat did look an awful lot like those pots outside.

As it turns out, sweet cookie crumbs with salty nuts and seeds are a great combo. Yum. The kids went off to special with dirt all over their faces, and when I got back I found I had walked around with crumbs all over my shirt... yikes. A GREAT Earth Day or Garden Day treat! I recommend you give it a try!

4.  You can never go into the dollar store for two things without coming out with twenty... or at least I can't. Here are the other useful things I picked up, several of which I had never seen there before.

Stacking letter trays, kid tweezers that have a nice amount of tension- neither two tight nor too loose, plastic test tubes in holders– wouldn't they be cute with planted seeds so you could see the roots, and silicone dishes– squishy as I show here. Might be good for sand cakes... and yes, I really mean SAND cakes.... as in PRETEND, IN-THE-SANDBOX sand cakes.... only one dirt recipe per post. snort.

5.  AND finally, a GIVEAWAY, the second in a series of three four!  Yep, I have yet another one lined up for June. This week's giveaway is another book... but not just "another" book, a very unique book about gardens no less. Secrets of the Vegetable Garden by Carron Brown and Giordano Poloni.

This nonfiction book about gardening is wonderfully illustrated...

with a surprise, because behind each picture, is MORE to the picture...

that you see when you hold the illustration up to the light. See?

Kids will love holding a flashlight to the pictures. In class I used the lamp on my document camera. They LOVED it! Every page was another surprise. I had to read it several times so we could get all the details. And I got a special pleasure out of seeing my kiddos enjoy such low tech book happiness with no screens involved. Funny how the novelty of seeing through the paper held such interest. Don't get me wrong, screens have good purpose, but so do books... and flashlights.

Here is the page as you look at it:

And here is the page with a flashlight behind it:

Secrets of the Vegetable Garden has all the facts needed to learn about plants. It can easily be read at spring planting time or autumn harvest.

It has some rather unique gardening information, too.

Lots of children, adults, too, don't know what a cloche is.  Pronounced  klōSH  it protects plants from creatures like snails and slugs, but it can also hurry up plant growth. I have used one in the classroom as the greenhouse effect works beautifully, and I find them beautiful to look at as well. You're not going to find a cloche in every children's book.

Thanks goes to Candice Currie, an independent consultant with Usborne Books and More for supplying Secrets of the Garden for the giveaway. Usborne Books and More is a wonderful book company that specializes in non-commercial, engaging, and educational books for children of all ages. As an independent consultant Candice shares these books through home parties, online parties, fundraisers, book drives, and book fairs. For more information you can contact Candice at  CandiceMCurrie@gmail.com or on Facebook here.  You can also see the great selection of books by clicking here. There are some terrific books I have to say.

All you have to do to enter the giveaway is follow my blog via Bloglovin' or Email, both of which you can do with a click to the right sidebar over there. I'll find your name and email address to verify. You do want to follow so you don't miss anything, like this book and the next giveaway I'm doing of a HUE camera and animation kit! More info coming on that SOON! Now click away and get into things below and I might just be dropping Secrets of the Garden in the mail to YOU!


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Hope you enjoyed today's review of life in the classroom and a great book. Now it's time to click on over to Doodle Bugs Teaching Five for Friday to enjoy a little more teacher reading.

Thanks for stopping by! Don't forget to enter! See you next time!

Fruit Snack Everyday? Yes, Way!

Oh, I am so grateful to have Fourth Grade Frolics' Monday Made It! linky to help spread the news about this system I developed to get GREAT healthy snacks into our class! You really gotta know about this! And this post holds a helpful Freebie, too!

In my classroom we eat community style snack, morning and afternoon, with everyone eating the same snack all together.

Did everyone get their squirt of hand gel first?

As both parent and teacher, I wanted to stay away from the cupcakes, chips, and candy that come into class when kids bring in daily snacks from home. We now know much more about how sugar is not good for our bodies and not good for learning. And we know how peer pressure from friends eating junk food trickles into families, even as they strive to eat in healthy ways. So I have parents supply two big boxes of shelf-stable, pantry items like crackers and cereals, about four times a year. The list that goes home includes only healthier choices to pick from.

But it gets better than that! You might wonder how it can be that parents only send in crackers four times a year to cover snack. Well, in this snack system parents supply fresh fruit and veggies for snack, too! And each family is only on the schedule four or five times in the year!

Yum!

Three families send in fresh produce each week. I ask for what amounts to one serving of snack for each child in the group–  a small bag of apples, a bag of baby carrots, half the number of bananas as kids, three cucumbers... you get the idea. I found over the years, though, that many parents happily send in more than this, easily supplying two class snacks per contribution. This means HALF OR MORE of our DAILY SNACKS are FRESH FRUIT AND VEGGIES. It's TERRIFIC!

Parents LOVE our snack system. When compared to packing two snacks every day, they save money and time by sending in class snacks less than ten times in the year. And both parents and I are happy that kids eat better overall... kids usually dig into fruit and veggies faster when their friends are happily munching beside them.

Sooo Good!

Here are the details that make it work:

Family participation is not mandatory in any way and I say that clearly to parents. However, over the ten years I've been doing this, I have come across very few families, as in maybe two, who never sent in produce at least some of the time. And, regardless, each student still got regular fresh snack as planned.

My school has a wide range of diverse families. One of the most striking things I discovered is that a household's economic means is neither a predictor of who will participate, nor how much produce will be sent in. Families who don't shop at fundraisers or book sales, for example, participate in supplying fruit. And my experience says that these very families are often the ones who show up at the classroom door with a whole grocery bag of produce!

If you teach at a school with extreme poverty, than this system might not work as described here. I encourage you to consider the benefits and think about ways that it could be tweaked so your students get more fruits and veggies, and healthier snacks in general. As a teacher, I've lived the adage where there's a will, there's a way. Before I developed this system in which all families to participate, I found three families who sent in enough fruit for each child once a week– one of them was not a parent at our school! In all my years of public school teaching we have had fresh produce... the will, the way.

Cukes become our favorite every year... Who knew?

It is not a hassle for me as a teacher. With all we have to do in our full days, I simply couldn't do it if that were not the case. I ask that parents wash the produce, but that's all. I've set up a space and routine for serving, and I've become a fast-as-a-TV-chef chopper... well, almost. Serving snack takes less minutes than everyone going to their backpacks to get and open snacks. Honest. And while I dole out and chop, we sing, do brain quizzes (like minute math), and talk to our friends. So although you could use your planning time to ready the snacks, you don't have to.

I make the schedule that parents follow by looking over the school calendar for the entire year. I list all the weeks we're in school and ask families to send in the goods on Monday or Tuesday of their week. Each week I assign three families to bring in produce. If it is a four day or less week, or there are days when we won't be having regular snack for some reason, I assign fewer families.

I discuss our snack system on Curriculum Night, and send home a letter explaining how it works. Although I like to discuss it at our meeting, this is not crucial to the system. The year I began serving fruits and veggies, I started midyear and it took off just fine. Also, there are always some families who miss Curriculum Night, and they come on board through the letter I send home.

As a help to parents, and to keep the snack program running smoothly, my Communication Parent (CP) sends home email reminders. My CP is a classroom parent who can't come in to help during the school day, but does have internet access. He/she emails a reminder to the parents of the upcoming week on the Friday afternoon before.

Quick FAQS:
- Crowds? This works in my classes of 18-22 students before needing any tweaking of amounts.

- Cleanliness? Each child gets a squirt of sanitizer hand gel directly before eating. We also practice "taking the first one our fingers touch." Bowls are cleaned after each use. My physician parents have had no issue with hand gel or community snack. With all the contact the kiddos have all day, snacking is probably one of our cleaner periods, because our germ awareness goes up with our healthy practices.

- Hungry? Kids always have the choice to eat or not. Even when they don't eat much, they go just another hour or so before having the chance to eat again. I encourage a "tooth bite," which is sticking one corner of one tooth into the selection. Funny how it's usually not as bad as they think.

- Yucky? Kids are permitted to say, "I don't care for this" one time. They are not allowed to say it more than that because it would be rude to the kids in our classroom community who like the food. The few kids who say this often say it right before they munch it all down :)

Snack was out on the veranda this spring day.

To make this all easier for you to see and use, I have a FREEBIE download for you to mull over. I include:
– a sample snack blurb to distribute to families describing our community fruit/veggie snack plan
– a sample nut-free, pantry snack list. This is the list I ask parents to choose from when they send in their boxes of snack for our pantry cupboard. Sometimes teachers don't want to have community style snack because they worry about kids with nut allergies. With community snack, I'm the gatekeeper doling out what everyone is eating, which makes our snacks more safe for allergy kids to be around. And the allergy families are happy, too.
– a sample parent schedule for bringing in produce throughout the year, which gives suggestions for produce to try.
– a sample email message that is sent to families by our CP.

Click on our basket of bounty to get to the FREE DOWNLOADS.

I would sure LIKE it if you would follow me! Various tips, tidbits and downloadables like this appear here. And we do believe in freebies :) Also, to my blogger friends, I'd love if you'd spread the word about this way of snacking and send readers on over to check it out. I think kids will benefit tons!

If you already have ways to get less junk and healthier snacks into your classroom, please share in the comments! If you're inspired to give it a try, I'd love to hear that, too. And even more terrific would be if you come back and let us know after it becomes your norm, or if you're a blogger, blog away. When you stumble upon something that works for you and your kiddos, you can't help but want to spread the word.

I say with great enthusiasm– try it, you'll like it!

Be sure to ask any questions you have below, too-- I'll get back to you! My hope is you'll put this healthy snack system in place for your kiddos.

Now click to head on back to more good ideas! Thanks, Tara!

The post Fruit Snack Everyday? Yes, Way! first appeared on kidpeopleclassroom.com