We did read a book before we left for our trip this morning.....it seems like so long ago now! We read Now I Know Healthy Eating by Melvin and Gilda Berger. It was an easy, nonfiction text about what kinds of foods we should be eating. We learned that our bodies need lots of different kinds of foods to keep us healthy and growing! It was a great way to get our minds thinking about what things we might see at the market!

Where do you find loads of healthy foods??  At the farmer's market! Today we took an Out and About to Atherton Mills Market.  After a chilly walk along the Lynx tracks, we made our way to the, thankfully, indoor market to search for all the foods that help our bodies grow big and strong.

First item on the agenda at the market, was lunch!  We had planned a picnic.....and despite the gloomy weather....we had one!  Inside....and right next to one of Charlotte's old trolley cars!  The kids would only eat their lunch with the promise of getting to explore the trolley when everyone was finished!

They LOVED getting on the trolley!  Never mind that there was no hope of going anywhere.....they all took turns spinning the wheel (good thing it was stationary!), and hanging out the windows waving for pictures!  They were so cute.....and what a great way to begin our journey around the market!  Special thanks to Ms. Lynn for giving us complete freedom to explore and touch!

As we walked around the market we saw pumpkins, vegetables, soaps, nuts, eggs, dried fruit, honey, pickles, and SOOOO much more!  Garrett and Tucker bought us honey sticks.....a natural, good for you treat!  Everyone wanted a turn to touch the fish.....yes.....a whole fish!  The teachers were waiting with hand sanitizer right after!!  The pickle man sang us a song while he played the accordion.....he even lets us all play a note!  Each booth had something wonderful to touch and see!  It truly was a wonderful place full of excitement and memories! 

Healthy foods!  That is the theme for the week!  Healthy is a difficult concept to explain, so we spent the morning talking about all kinds of things that are healthy, and make our bodies feel good and happy, and some not healthy things, that make our bodies and friends feel sad and sick.  It was a good way to review some of the vocabulary from last week too!

Our story today was Gregory, The Terrible Eater by Mitchell Sharmat.  In the story, Gregory, who is a goat, won't eat the foods that goats usually eat.  He only wants to eat fruits and vegetables.  His parents think he is a terrible eater!  Finally, they get him to try some "goat" foods, like tires....and paper.....and shoes....and he gets a stomach ache from eating too much!  In the end, he decides to eat some healthy foods and some "goat" foods together!

The kids thought that the book was extra funny!  They laughed when the goat family ate foods that people wouldn't even think about eating!  We definitely classified that as "not healthy"!

During lunch, we had a special treat and watched a Reading Rainbow video about foods animals eat.  First, they read our story again, then they showed us several animals and talked about the foods that are  healthy for them to eat.  After the video, we talked about how animals and people don't eat the same foods.  We all need different things to keep us healthy!

Ms. Michelle came today with some awesome new things!  First, she had a hopscotch rug.  You could immediately tell who had some prior experience with hopscotch and who was seeing it for the first time!  They all loved it.....and the progress they made in just a few turns was amazing!  Ms. Michelle also had some large cardboard building bricks.  The plan was for the kids to copy patterns that the teachers made, using the same bricks in the same positions.  BUT.....we changed it up to reinforce some of our classroom goals!  We made the bricks into all kinds of letters!  It was so much fun and worked well until the kids wanted to make letters like S and R!  Leave it to them to stump the teacher!!!  Ms. Michelle also had a tracing and lacing station.  She knows that everyone is on the verge of learning to write and she is trying to help us with that!  Such concentration in that station.....you would have been very proud!!

Goodies from Dilworth Drug!!

What do GERMS look like?

Thank You Dilworth Drug!

Ms. Jamie and Mr. Josh were wonderful hosts today!

We saw Officer Wade on our walk!

Our favorite community helper stopped to make sure we were being safe!

Our book for today, We Need Pharmacist by Helen Frost, helped us learn about the things we would see and talk about on our Out and About.  There was lots of new vocabulary.....so we made a list to help us remember what to look for while we were on our visit!

The Out and About had beautiful weather!  No coats (or rain gear!) needed!  We met Ms. Jamie and Mr. Josh at Dilworth Drug.  They gave us a bag full of goodies, told us about their jobs, and showed us lots of medicines. We even got to see all the different flavors they can use to make our Yucky medicines taste better!  Did you know they have chocolate??  We learned about a lot medicines today and how they work to keep us healthy.

Thank you Dilworth Drugs!

Once back at school, we did a really fun demonstration about how a sneeze spreads germs. I pretended to sneeze into my hand (which the kids thought was funny in itself), without covering my mouth, blowing a handful of pretend pom-pom germs all over the carpet! They went everywhere! That got the attention of everybody!  We gathered up all the germs and repeated the sneeze.  This time I sneezed into my elbow (like we've been talking about) and all the germs stayed in my lap.  It wasn't nearly as much fun, but we all agreed that I should keep my yucky germs to myself instead of getting them all over everybody else in the room!  A good, concrete experiment to remind us to cover our mouths. 

We watched some more videos and two songs about germs on the iPad. You wouldn't believe how engaged all the kiddos were!  Ms. Ellen and I had a good laugh at all their faces.  Some filled with awe and true learning.....some noses crinkled up with disgust.....some laughing and loving every minute of boy humor!  I guess that any of those is a good start to keeping them all healthy this winter!!

Wash up QUICK!

How do germs travel?

Don't get sick.....wash up quick!!  That was the slogan for the day!!  We began with this great....very kid friendly....video about germs.  Lots of places in this video where the kiddos were laughing and the grown-ups were saying YUCK and shaking their heads no!  We learned what germs are, what they can do to us, where they live, and how to get rid of them! 

Big Smelly Bear by Britta Techenrup is a story about a bear who doesn't want to take a bath. He is so smelly that none of the other animals want to be around him. There are germs and flies all around him.  One day he gets an itch on his back that he can't reach.  No one will help him because of how bad he smells.  Finally, he meets Big Fluffy Bear who tells him that if he takes a bath, he will scratch his back.  Big Smelly Bear agrees and washes all the dirt, germs, and smelliness off in the pond.

For science we did an experiment about how germs are spread.  We used sparkly silver glitter as our germs.  I pretend coughed in my hand.  There were about a million germs in my hand and on the table.  I gave the kid beside me at the table a high five.  He had germs on his hand.  That kid passed them along to the next friend.....all the way around the table!!  Then Ms. Ellen went to the door and touched the door knob.....you guessed it.....glitter germs on the door knob!  They were EVERYWHERE!!  We talked about how quickly that happened and since we had already learned that germs will make us sick.....we headed off the bathroom to wash the germs away with soapy water. 

The kids all practiced good hand washing today.....front, back, and in between our fingers.  Making lots of bubbles and rinsing the germs away!  Some kids got all the germs on the first time......and some had to take a second try to get them all!   

I didn't know that germs could be such a fun and interesting topic.....but after today......I have a whole new perspective!!  I'm hoping that we didn't create germ-o-phobics.....or maybe I'm actually hoping that we did!!