Cooking and Geology

The two go together hand-in-hand, right? Of course! Well, in our curriculum they do.

The directors recently decided to change up a lot of our extracurricular courses - the new science and art are great because there is less gluing of materials that aren't meant to be glued and there is actually tape included when it's required!! They also added cooking, which sounded like so much fun, and it is for the kids... I wouldn't call it cooking so much as mixing and placing, but I have 4 and 5 year olds, so there's not much else they're capable of, or at least trusted to be capable of, because I'm pretty sure if these kids lived on the American prairies of the 1800s that they'd be rising with the rooster and milking the cows, or in the very least collecting eggs or something along those lines.

Two Thursdays ago (was supposed to be Tuesday, but materials arrived late/early and we had to use them right away because they were "fresh") was our first special session: making sandwiches(!) to learn about the stratum... erm, okay... layers, I can see that. But the sandwiches weren't any regular sandwiches - ingredients: bread, ham, cheese... normal so far... tomato, lettuce - okay... and jam... who'sawhat?! The kids loved 'em though! One kid even ate his after it fell on the floor (I won't name names and I won't say that I encouraged it, or discouraged it either, for that matter)!

Oh, and the best part was that they were given those big tapioca tea straws to jam into the sandwich and check out the layers. They did that and then continued to eat like that for the rest of the sandwich (see pictures below) - hey, it helped to take up time, at least.

(this is Stella, and don't you worry, I make sure to yell, "Steeeeeeeeeeella!" at least once a day ^^)

(Jessica is a great student; she always smiles and works really hard at improving her English)

(Roy, Danny and Willie show each other their layers and enjoy the tasty treats)

(Willie loves to laugh!)

(Aden, most likely judging the child who ate their sandwich off the floor; his English is amazing, and yesterday for Show and Tell he recited his dinosaur book and proceeded to rattle off facts about each of the eight dinosaurs he brought to show - needless to say, my jaw was on the floor.)

Unfortunately, I left the flashcards downstairs, though I'm not sure they would have been much help... you be the judge.

Last week's cooking was "making jellies" aka jell-oish. This week's cooking was making the messiest syrup-coated trail mix in the world! New hurdle to tackle: getting the director to approve cooking before lunch (as the schedule shows) instead of after so the teachers aren't in a mad dash to get everything ready to go home... but sometimes we need the fridge, so it probably won't happen... we'll see, we'll see.