3rd time's a charm!

Apparently, kindergarten classes study farming! They visit a farm at the OC Fairgrounds for a field trip and spend weeks learning about all the different kinds of farms and the work that happens on farms. Well, as you can imagine, farming is right up our alley! Produce farming that is! Ryan's teacher heard about the produce lesson that we did for the preschoolers earlier in the year (and at last year's preschool too!) and asked if we would mind doing the same kind of lesson for Ryan's class! You know that I was so, so excited! Steve was excited too... he got to load up his car with 12 boxes of different kinds of produce, a dolley to "schelpp" it all out to the classroom, and help out with 50 kindergarteners... to him, it was better than a day on the golf course with his buddies! (Haha, read sarcasm here). You know what though, even after all that hard work, he was the proudest papa ever! He loved that Ryan's eyes lit up having her mommy and daddy there in class and to be able to show off her daddy to all her friends! It was a priceless moment to see her face.

The day before, Ryan and her friends saw us bringing in all the teaching supplies. She could hardly contain herself.

2 classes of kindergartners = 50 kids!
Whoa, how fun is that? The first part of the lesson was about categorizing. We talked about different kinds of produce and where it grows... in the soil, on a tree, or on a vine/bush. We used a tree map to organize our learning!
So fun... the kids were so attentive!

You can see here (a little of it anyway) that we set up the produce around the room as "real life" manipulatives. After the lesson, the kids were allowed to take a paper bag and fill up on groceries to touch, smell, and take home to their families. So many parents told me the next day how excited their kids were to put away their "groceries."

P.S. Hey, are those Cuties I see in the picture?

The second part of the lesson focused on sequencing. As a reader, it is important to understand the sequence of events. So hopefully, this was a good start. I taught the students the sequence of how the fruits and vegetables get from the farm to the consumer!

And then we acted in all out (complete with costumes). In this picture you can see the 2 truckers, the grocery store produce manager, the consumer, and the produce broker (all out of order of course). The kids' job was to put everyone in the right order. Missing from this picture is the farmer and the grocery clerk. Notice that the produce broker (aka Steve's job) is holding a phone and wearing a Faconnable tie! I made this boy answer the phone and say, "Hey Joey, I wanna buy some fruit!" Let's be honest, you all know I couldn't REALLY have a 6 year old say the words that Steve REALLY says on the phone, right?

As any good mom would do, I asked Ryan which role she wanted to play ahead of time... heeheehee! She chose the consumer! What an outfit!

Afterward, we summarized all the important learnings for the day! The last thing was to let the kids go shopping! Sadly, we didn't get any pictures of this chaos! We must have been busy herding all the kids through their very own Farmer's Market!

A family picture to remember the occasion forever!

Hopefully, we'll get to do this lesson one for time when Charlie is in kindergarten! 4th time will really be a charm, right?

LOVE YOU RY-RY!

Thanks for having us in your classroom!