Springtime Farm Delivery

We have finally started ordering our local farm produce from the Sustainable Food Center again!

Over the winter, the farms that the Sustainable Food Center works with had a hard time producing food. But they're back! Last week we received beautiful carrots and salad greens from Animal Farm:

We were able to afford these delicious vegetables with the funds from the Farm to Child Care grant I mentioned in my last post.

And part of this awesome grant allows us to give cooking lessons!

Here's Zayden, a student in the Grasshopper (2 y/o) room enjoying his fresh farm greens sample from the 

"Learn to Build a Salad" lesson.

See? Kids DO eat green things and vegetables :)

Buon appetito, amici!

Ms. Rachel

Farm to Childcare Grant Adventures!

Ms. Rachel, you may have noticed, has been fairly absent from the blogosphere lately.

But I'm back! And newly certified as a yoga instructor. I look forward to teaching yoga to the kiddos and staff sometime soon, but in the meantime I am incorporating yoga ethics and mindfulness with the mini-lessons I'm giving the kids in their classrooms each month.

These mini-lessons are graciously funded for us by the US Department of Agriculture through the Farm to Childcare grant.

Our most recent lesson was a food tasting of three different types of melons- Yum!

Each class learned:

• The parts of the melon: flesh, rind, and seeds
• The names of these melons: cantaloupe, watermelon, honeydew
• The colors of each melon
• How to describe the taste and texture of each melon
• Which melon was their favorite that day

Check out these beauties:

This is Michael, a one year-old Dew Drop, making his next move at the tasting table:


And here's a clip of the action from the Shining Star room (4-5 y/o). Listen closely for Larkin, off camera, asking if the honeydew melon has honey in it :)

Perhaps next time you're at the grocery store, you can toss a melon into your basket. Sliced fresh melon is great with chili powder and salt, cured meats like prosciutto, or chopped up by themselves or on top of granola and yogurt. Enlist your kiddos to come up with serving ideas- they're endlessly creative about these sorts of things.

'Til next time!
Ms. Rachel

Weekly Menus

Greetings!

I would like to share with everyone the weekly menus I have planned for the school ever since I started making them in a weekly format as opposed to monthly.

Hopefully you all can find some ideas in here about what to cook for your own family or school.

And if you're a Mainspring parent, now you have a reference of the meals so you can discuss with your kids what they think about what they're eating at school!

The menus are listed by the Monday of that week. 

Simply click on the date to see the document! 

(Please excuse some formatting shifts due to the conversion to Google docs)

2013:
1/07
1/14

2012:
12/31
12/24
12/17
12/10
12/03
11/26
11/19
11/12
11/05
10/29
10/22
10/15
10/08
10/01
9/24
9/17
9/10
9/03
8/27
8/20
8/13
8/06
7/30
7/23
7/16
7/09
7/02
6/25
6/18
6/11