Our First Walking Field Trip

Today, we had a great outing to the Farmers' Market with Room B. We harvested dozens of tiny, sweet, orange cherry tomatoes from our school garden, but needed to round out this harvest with a few more ingredients to make a lunch treat. We had wonderful parent chaperones that walked the students through all the stands, asking the vendors questions about the produce, tasting all the samples that we were offered. Pluots, peaches, and strawberries seemed to be the favorites.

Haashim's group successfully found green and round yellow onions. Mea's group found cilantro. Joe's group found big, juicy red tomatoes. Chloe's group found some unusual yellow and green tomatoes. Can you guess what we made with this collection of fruits, roots, and herbs? Yes, delicious salsa! We were lucky that Theo's mom had the idea to make some nectarine salsa to taste and compare to the traditional tomato salsa.

After taking turns at the cutting boards - much washing, chopping, mixing and a few shakes of salt - our snack was ready. The children from both classes enjoyed having a few corn chips and a small cup of both kinds of salsa to go with their lunch. Many who reluctantly took their servings ended up deciding it was a pretty tasty combination. It was a great way to celebrate the whole group staying to eat in the multipurpose room together starting this week. Of course, this was also a great example of how the life skill cooperation can make our classroom community more delicious.