Learning About Food

From the Bright Horizons Newsletter

Where Does Our Food Come From?

Ty, age 4, stared with wonder at the long orange vegetable with the big green leaves coming out of the top. “What is this?” he asked his Dad. His Dad replied, “That’s a carrot.” “That’s a carrot??” asked Ty. “I thought carrots were those little orange things that come in plastic bags.” Recent marketing data has shown that there has been an upsurge this year in families planting vegetable gardens. Hard economic times have been leading more of us back to the backyard garden. In tough times, backyard gardens make a lot of sense, but they make sense for more than financial reasons. Many children have never had experience with where food comes from. A by-product of less and less time outdoors, a trend for many U.S. families, is that fewer children get first-hand experience with food sources. In days past, more of us had backyard gardens or visited a farm of family members or friends. We may have gotten to pick apples from the tree or ground, collect eggs from the hen house, or harvest beans off the plants. Today, many children only experience food coming from a grocery store. Reconnecting our children to food’s origins can build their conceptual understanding of food sources, while also providing an opportunity to talk about healthy eating and learn about the environmental implications of growing organically or transporting food long distances. Here are a few suggestions to introduce these ideas to your children: Plant your own garden which can be as small or large as you would like. Even having one cherry tomato plant in a container on your porch or patio gives your child a chance to experience the growing and harvesting cycle. Some regions sponsor community or urban gardens where several families who don’t have gardening space can farm a small plot together. Join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group. Many farms now offer locally grown, often organic, foods by subscription. A family purchases a “share” of a local farm and receives a bag or box of fresh fruits and veggies that they pick up each week. Purchasing shares help guarantee the farmer’s subsistence and the food is seasonal and fresh off the farm. The pick-up place for the vegetables is often the farm itself. This can become a fun and educational experience for your children. The foods each week may include some you or your children have never seen before like turnips, kale, or red beets; but learning more about these foods can become a family educational adventure. Some CSAs also offer opportunities to work on the farm. Visit the local farmers' market with your children. While your children probably won’t get to see where the actual food is grown, they will typically see unpackaged foods and some foods they are unfamiliar with. They may even get to talk to the farmer. Consider eating one “seasonal” meal each week. This would mean only using fruits and vegetables that are in season, not grown in different climates and not shipped from far away. If you shop at farmers' markets or join a CSA, this is easy, because they only carry seasonal items. Older children might enjoy making a chart of when their favorite fruits and vegetables are available locally and can look forward to their purchase. Go to http://www.localharvest.org for a listing of CSAs and farmers' markets in your area as well as for additional information about organic food and related topics. For more fun ideas on making the trip to the farmers' market or to pick up your CSA share interesting for your child(ren), read more below: Encourage conversations between your child and the farmer. Older children can keep a market journal. Questions to ask: - Where is your farm located? - What kind of tomato/lettuce/etc. is this? - When was this vegetable/fruit picked? - What produce will you have next week? Engage young children using their senses: - What does the vegetable/fruit feel like? Is it bumpy or smooth? Is it hard or soft? - What does the vegetable/fruit look like? What color is it? What shape? - What does the vegetable/fruit sound like when you tap it? Is it hollow? Does it sound like a drum? - What does the vegetable/fruit smell like? Does it have a strong smell or no smell? - What does the vegetable/fruit taste like? Do you think it will be juicy or dry? Sweet or salty? Let’s go home and give it a taste. Create a Market Scavenger Hunt: - Create a grocery list before going to the market. - Have your child help locate the items on the list. - Use check marks or stickers to show the item as complete. - Consider a “freebie” square for an item that the child can pick. Allow children to experience many different markets: - Talk about the differences and similarities between each. - Older children can add this to their farmers' market journal. - Find markets with children’s entertainment or educational events. - Meet friends for a play date or picnic at the market. Reinforce the learning at home: - Have children compare produce from the grocery store with produce from the farmers’ market. Do they look the same? Feel the same? Smell the same? Taste the same? - Create a “food map.” Using a world or U.S. map, highlight regions by category. Have children mark on the map where the produce they eat in a week comes from. (NOTE: By law, all stores need to label the Country of Origin for all produce). Green: nearby region/state Yellow: surrounding area/region Blue: inside U.S. Red: outside U.S - For younger children, read books about planting and farming. - Help children plant and care for their own vegetable plant. Cook together. Older children can help select recipes and help prepare a salad or larger meal from fruits and vegetables they helped select at the farmers' market or from your own garden or CSA.

Children Keeping it Simple, Teaching Simplicity

A few inspiring comments from my teachers in simplicity, children.

• I was participating in Seattle’s Martin Luther King, Jr., March and Rally this year with some of the faculty, students and parents from the school I work at. During the march one of our first graders looked up at me and said, “Oh, I know why you’re here today, Ashley.” “Why?” I asked. “Because this is all about friendship… and you’re the friendship teacher.”
  
  (fyi: I host Friendship Groups, a class that all the students in the class participate in just like math or reading. The aim is to help students deepen their ability to connect with and understand themselves and others. It's all about friendship... with ourselves, others and the world around us!)
  
  
• During Obama's presidential inauguration Rev. Joseph Lowery was talking about love,
  "And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance."
  
  I looked in front of me as a Kindergartner was staring down at his little hands, shaping them into a heart. That image summed up where my hope for our future lies... in love.
  
  
• After the inauguration we hosted an Open Space with the 3rd graders. One child's closing remarks, "I learned that when everyone pitches in just a little bit, it can make a giant difference."
  
  
• Words of wisdom that a 2nd grader told me over lunch one day that I am practicing and trying to better embody, "Just listen until your mind gets deeper and then you'll understand."

I am so grateful for all the gifts that are bestowed upon me by these wise humans who are so willing to share their world.

heart photo by samantha celera

Patience, Understanding, Love, Acceptance

by Kim Hix

Patience, understanding, love, acceptance are gifts we all need from each other but they are specially important for children with disabilities, of any kind. It is difficult to ignore rude, hurtful comments, to be left out and laughed at. Unfortunately this is a common childhood occurrence, however on a more frequent and constant basis for children who are different. Children who are already fragile due to any kind of illness, disability or impairment are easy targets for those who are stronger and more confidant. Self esteem is something we all have whether it be high or low, and how we perceive ourselves, abilities and worth are all too often dependant on others. My wish is that we teach our children and ourselves to accept differences and embrace the individuality that we all have, to see beyond any physical, mental or emotional challenges. If you are a parent of a "high spirited, intense child" as I am, academically, socially and emotionally challenged; you have most likely heard some of the same accusations I have from parents of "perfect " children who do no wrong, who respond to their parents every command on queue, perfectly behaved and well mannered, who excel in sports and academics. I do not harbor resentment because there child may be everything mine is not, they are simply different, with gifts that may be harder to find to others, but not to me. My hope and prayer is that the people in general open their minds and come to realize that children like mine, and millions more ,who suffer with these illnesses, are not bad kids, not evil or purposefully oppositional, but are lovable, kind, funny, smart and full of promise as is every other child. Yes,they may do things differently, loudly, extremely,and outrageously. They need to be given understanding, reassurance, patience, acceptance and compassion. My wish is that other children who feel different for any reason find hope, promise, acceptance and the gift that is within them and realize they are not alone. Mental illness is not a choice, it is not contagious, it does not make you "less than". I hope our story will open the lines of communication for parents and children, friends and neighbors to discuss and explore behavior they may not understand. My biggest hope is that children who are seeking acceptance,understanding and answers be able to find that from parents, peers, teachers and siblings and to know they are not alone in their challenges.

Kim Hix is participating in the WOW! Women on Writing Blog Tour, promoting her book No One is Perfect and YOU Are a Great Kid.

Next Blog Tour Guest, Kim Hix

The next WOW! Women on Writing author that will visit Educating for Wholeness is Kim Hix promoting her book, No One is Perfect and YOU Are a Great Kid, winner of Best Children's Book for ages 6 and under, Reader Views Award for 2007 Annual Literary Awards. She will write an entry on February 17th. For now I'll tease you with a bit about Kim and her book.

No One is Perfect and YOU are a Great Kid is a lovely book written about Zack, a young boy who struggles daily with ever changing moods. He tries to understand why he gets very sad, upset, discouraged and angry in response to what most would consider insignificant events. Zack often feels different, left out, and isolated due to his moods. He poses thought provoking questions to his audience that can spur some meaningful conversation.

This book will touch your heart and anyone who has a special child in their life who struggles with any degree of emotional, behavorial, or psychiatric disorder.

"My name is Kim Hix and I am the mother of a very special young boy who struggles with emotional difficulties. He has experienced an array of moods from an early age, which include rages, depression, anxiety, and drastic mood shifts. In our journey to find help, we've encountered many specialists and interesting people. During this time, my son dealt with feeling different from his peers, isolated, and at times, rejected. My son would express to me that he felt no one understood him and that he was the only kid in the world with these problems. What started out as a project to help my son, cultivated a desire to let other kids and parents know that they are NOT alone. In fact, millions of children are suffering with mental illness, neuropsychiatric disorders, and behavior disorders. They long to be accepted, to be normal, and just fit in. They suffer, and we, the parents, suffer all the while our hearts are breaking.

"This is why I wrote a book for Zack and kids like him, who struggle with feelings of being different. It is my hope that this story will offer some measure of comfort and belonging to the children who read it."

An Invisible String That Will Stretch and Not Break

photo by D.Hyuk

An amazing story about the bond between a mother and a daughter. I think it's a beautiful analogy that any family could play with.

Meredith has an ongoing story about an "invisible string" attaching her to her mother. This story began in a literal manner, when she at age two would wrap one end of a string around her mother and then wrap the other end around her own wrist and say that they were "connected forever." The string has morphed into an invisible string, that will "stretch and not break" when necessary, such as when she is at preschool. We have come to think of this string as an indication of her internal emotional state and a metaphor for managing separation.

For example, after a long and challenging day recently, she said that the string was very short and would break if her mother left her side. Her baby sister started crying, however, so then she added that her magic wand had turned the string into a "long golden thread that would stretch and not break" while her mother tended to the baby. "But," she warned, "when Rosie stops crying, it will turn back into a very short string that can break easily." She mentions the string every month or two, and we have come to appreciate her use of creativity and abstraction in expressing her psychological state.

~Seattle Mom

Together We Can Make a Difference: Open Space with Children

On January 20th, 2009 after President Obama’s Inauguration Ceremony 45 third graders gathered in a circle for an Open Space event.

Three students on a planning committee decided the questions that would guide the students’ time together:

• What is something that a group of people working together can change?
• What is something that you think is important in our school or in our world that you would like to discuss?
  

The planning committee started the open space with a poem and a story.
The opening poem by Mila Kopp:


And another student told a story:

Once you get older it’s harder for people to change your mind so you’re not as much of a help to the community when they’re trying to think of something to do or when something’s wrong and they need help and are deciding what to do. For instance, with my grandfather, it’s really hard for people to change his mind because he just thinks one thing is right and if something else is right and someone tells him, because he’s older, it’s a lot harder to change his mind and it might not even happen.

The students were told how the process of Open Space works… and then they got to it, deciding what they wanted to talk about, posting their topics and attending the sessions. Students had paper to take notes and had the option of using a talking piece to facilitate their conversations. Some students were given video cameras to interview and document the process.

This same process was repeated 2 more times with groups of 1st and 2nd graders. Below are examples of topics that were posted, some of their notes, and comments from the closing circles. All of the student's brave spelling has be preserved. For the complete list of Topics, Session Notes and Closing Circle Comments download this document.

Topics Posted

• How to save the animals
• Don’t be rude
• Stop violence, It may cause other bad issues
• Sushi in hot lunch’s
• Don’t kill animals for coats
• Do not be to loud. Try to be silent.
• Save papper saves trees
• Globle Warming – When you have to go a short way, don’t take your car!
• FREEDOM OF CHOICE
• Fair and unfair
• Palushin
• being raspactfoll
• wrcing to gether in socor
• Help stop war
• Bing Nice With Othrs
• Life
• Being helpful
• how to work out prablums
• Welcome people into gam’s

Session Notes

Polution
Notes

• “I think that pollution is rong because I think the earth should be in it’s healtyest condition and everyone should carpull as much as possible.”
• “If you polute, that leads to global waring witch leads to us.”
  

What can we do now?

• “Groups can like get together and pick up litter.”
• “Everyone should always carry a bag with them to carry litter that you find on the ground and picked up.”
  

Globle Warming
Notes

• If you have to go a short way, don’t take your car!
• Put up sines to stop globle warming
  

What can we do?

• STOP Globle Warming (happy voice) in ten years (Deep Voice)

Save the animals
Notes

• Adopt a pet at Cat Adoption Centers and other places
• Look for lost pets
• Look in allys
• Start your own adoption center

How to save the animals
What can we do now?
3. be president and make a law that says you can only kill animals once a year
4. make a complante to the president

Gasoline
What can we do now?

• Walking, biking
• Invent vical that runs on trash or sun, rain
• hybrid
• carpool
  

Bing nice with others
Notes

• Be nice to others
• Telling others to be nice
• Nicely tell others to be nice
  

Talk don’t hit
What can we do now?

• We will say, “Talk don’t hit!” and we will try not to do it ourselves

Being helpful
Notes
Examples

• Yore little brother is skating and you help him.
• Yore little brother got a shot you put a bandade on him

Doing the dishes
Notes

• Save energy by not using dish water
• Tirn off the faucet more
• People make it easier
• sistrs and brothers can help

Help stop war
Notes

• Traiding reciorses

Talk it out
Notes

• We think it is important to talk it out because
• We have a lot of issues to talk out
• if you don’t talk, it sometimes get to step 3 (that’s bad!)
• You need to protect your body

Talking to people
Notes

• Talk to people instead of hitting
• If you are shy talk
• If you are a chatterbox let others have a chance to speak
  

How to stop polushin
Notes

• Not cut down tree
• Rideing bikes ensted of cars
• Don’t wast water
• Don’t kill animals
• Don’t drive bad mpg cars
• Drive hyurids
• Don’t wast paper

Stop Palooting
Notes

• New invechins
• New fuels
  

Playing
Notes

• If someone is playing and made up an idea it could lead to a big problem if they don’t include the other person in the idea
• Playing is dangerus
• You should not exclude other people
  

Closing Circle Comments
What did you find interesting? What did you learn?
Did you hear anything you haven’t thought about before?

• If you want to save gas and not pollute the Earth, you should definitely carpool. I also want to give a compliment to my group for thinking of so much ideas.
• Me and my group came up with pollution. I think I’m sort of helping because I carpool. And I think people should ride bikes and scooters and walk more often then just riding cars. And if you just want to go over to the next store neighbors or the ice cream shop down the road, even though it’s faster to go on a car, you should probably just walk or scooter or bike ride.
• I agree with (another student) that you don’t need that many people, you only need like 5, you don’t need like 15 or 20 or 50. You don’t need huge numbers like that.
• I learned that when everyone pitches in just a little bit, it can make a giant difference.
• I discovered how to keep clean water
• I discovered how pollution can make the air dirty and hurt people and animals
• I learned about factories that are bad for the environment, and the importance of different energy sources
• I learned that a lot of people were thinking about how cars pollute the earth
• We talked about how to stop wars
• I discovered a lot of people have ideas too.
• I discovered that once you think about it, there is a lot more waste
• I discovered there is a lot of things to change and like President Obama, we should start.
• I learned it can actually be pretty fun to work with other people
• Teacher: I learned that you all can have important conversations by yourselves and that you don’t need the adults there. I also learned that you can self-organize what you want to talk about.
  

Stretched Beyond the Learning Zone

video by Chrysalis Studios

I’ve been wanting to learn a new skill called Graphic Recording (watch the video to see a professional in action). I love to doodle, love listening for the essence of what a group is saying and enjoy trying to make the ideas and abstractions visual and concrete. I know that I am not a skilled drawer. I’ve never had a natural ability to draw real things (I do draw abstractions) and I’ve never practiced or taken a class to try and learn this skill. So off I went yesterday to a beginner’s graphic recording class to try and develop this new skill that I could integrate with an old one. At least that’s what I thought I was there to learn!

What I really learned about was the intensity of feeling overwhelmed, frozen, unable to act, stretched beyond my capacities to learn, inadequate, and unclear about where to start.

The first three fourths of the class I was doing great and enjoying myself. I was learning new things and loving that! We were going over basic lettering and drawing skills. The other participants in the room with me were 2 professional artists and 2 art history majors who work in other fields. My drawing station was sandwiched between the professional illustrator and the professional graphic artist. I was fine with that. As we’d draw various icons, I’d copy what the instructor drew, laugh at my attempts, keep trying, look around the room and learn from what others were drawing. I was humored by my products and inspired by those around me. Sometimes I was even impressed by what I drew. I felt comfortable with the fact that this was a skill that I currently didn’t have and that I was in the process of learning. I was mildly embarrassed at how un-people like my efforts to draw people were, but this was the time to learn and I was clearly showing up to learn so it was okay.

And then the last section of the class. We had two opportunities to do live graphic recording. First we listened as a brief article was read to us and we recorded. It was fast, confusing and my graphic was a mess. I could get words out but not images. I was flooded with information and stuck between trying to write down everything fast, create images, and fill my paper. Phew… it was done. My product was awful, but that was fine. To the garbage it went, a fine first experience. I learned how I had to slow down and really listen and not just try and write everything down (or I wouldn’t understand any of it).

Here we go, we’re doing it again. This time we’ve got a 10 minute lecture on dog training to graphically record. I know to save a lot of space, I know there is a lot of information (10 minutes worth) to get recorded on my 8 foot piece of paper. I’m going to go slow, listen to the heart of what is being said and record what moves through me.

Midway through this process, I reached beyond my stretch zone, beyond my learning zone and into a place where I felt frozen and inadequate. I was stretching myself on too many fronts and I was unable to find moments of success in any of them. The organization of ideas on my page was a mess, I wasn’t clear if I was capturing the main ideas, I had no idea how to even begin to draw a dog and there were many places where I wanted to, and I was trying to think of other images that would help my page not be all words. And all of these things that I didn’t know were effecting the things that I thought I did know. Even the words that I was writing were often too small, illegible and upon later viewing contained many misspellings. At one point the instructor noticed that I had frozen, that I was breaking down or giving up. She encouraged me to just keep going, record whatever comes through me. I felt a little bit of relief. Okay, just listen to what comes through you. The problem was that everything that emerged through me at this point was filtered through a feeling of inadequacy. I made it to the end. I spent the next 10 minutes along with my classmates ‘making it pretty,’ adding color, filling in details, trying to create a whole out of this mess. It was not fun. It felt pointless. There was no way to turn these parts into a decent final product.

As I shared this story with a friend, he kept asking if I was embarrassed. I was a little, but that wasn’t my strongest emotion. I was totally discouraged. All of the hope and possibility, all of my sense of ‘just keep trying,’ ‘you’re just learning,’ ‘just do what you can,’ ‘you’re learning a new skill’ had emptied out of me. I felt overwhelmed, inadequate and discouraged. And then, feeling all of that weight, I just wanted to quit.

The opportunity to experience paralysis and all of its accompanying emotions and responses was my greatest learning yesterday. While the experience itself was brief and passed, after the class I allowed myself to stay with that feeling of failure, the feeling that I couldn’t do it, the reality that I was stretched beyond where I had tools to help myself stay engaged. I slipped deeper and deeper into how little of a person I felt. It’s really hard for me to be asked to do something and then constantly be confronted with the fact that I can’t do it. There must be something wrong with me, right?

If I intellectually look at it now, I don't feel any of those things. However, in the moment, that is what captured me.

I think about a 5 year old friend of mine who at times expresses his emotions of anger and embarrassment by lashing out and hurting another person. I hear him, after the fact, telling me that he feels sad that he’s hurt the other person. I imagine that in the moment of lashing out and pinching another, there is a part of him that is aware that he’s ‘not doing it right’ and yet the other parts of him have no idea as to how to stop and act in a different way. Just like I haven’t learned the skills of drawing and graphic recording, he hasn’t learned the skills of recognizing his emotions, choosing how to respond and thus having a respectful engagement when he’s feeling a strong emotion. In those moments, does he feel the same sense of overwhelmed inadequacy as I did yesterday? Does he feel frozen with no ideas about where to successfully start?

In retrospect, there were many places that I could have started. I could have taken a deep breath. I could have picked one skill to work on instead of trying to accomplish all of them. I could have chosen to start with only paying attention to how I organize my page, or simply capturing the content, or just try to draw images, regardless of what they look like. Any of those would have been simple places for me to narrow this seemingly unapproachable task and find a place to make contact, to re-enter, to focus my attention. But in the moment, I didn’t see those doorways. I just felt paralyzed by this overwhelming flood of sensations, thoughts and feelings. And there was this non-stop voice of the lecture and the unyielding presence of this task I was supposed to be accomplishing staring me in the face.

I walked away from the experience with half of me feeling deflated, depleted, and quite down on myself. I was also frustrated and disappointed in that side of myself. I had kept such a great attitude, stayed so open to learning and so accepting of where I was in my skills and abilities. I had such courage to walk into something as a complete beginner with openness to learn. And then, once that place of being pushed beyond my capacities was activated in me, it was so hard to rediscover solid ground. Intellectually I was able to come back to the room, the group, and recognize the great job I did by just jumping in and trying. But experientially, it was like a toxic chemical had been released in me and it was hard to cleanse it out of me. On a small scale it feels like a dose of shock and trauma to my system. It was as if I had been stung by a bee. I wasn’t hurting that much any more, I was calm again. And yet the shock of being stung was still in my system and I could still feel the echo of the poison reverberating in my being.

And so the questions that I sit with: How do I recognize when others are stretched beyond their learning zone? How do I recognize and support them if they have hit a place of discouragement and despair? How can I offer children and adults opportunities to see places to start? And for myself, I hope that in the future I will recognize when I reach that break down place and will remember to narrow down my choices and find one place to focus my attention, finding a place to start.

A Song Can Lessen the Fear

Sderot, Israel is near the boarder with Gaza and is a city that experienced (experiences?) a constant threat of Qassam rockets being fired into the city. When a rocket is spotted, there is a "Red Color" alert that is sounded warning people to take cover.

Residents of Sderot have about less than a minute to get to a place of safety when they hear the warning "Red Color" announcing an incoming rocket (spotted by those who watch for them). Hearing a Red Color causes panic in many, especially children. ~ Source

“Children experienced real developmental regressions, some began bedwetting,” she said. “They were getting hysterical when the alarm sounded – some freezing in place, unable to seek cover. One day I felt like ‘now is the time’ and I took this song I'd made up to a kindergarten class.” ~ Source

It is not hard to believe that repetitively experiencing alarming threats to one's life from 'out of the sky' would cause trauma for children. The following video is an example of how one woman helped create change for many children. She could not change the threat of the rockets, but she found ways to shape the experience so that the children were not stripped of all of their power and understanding but could, instead, become active participants in the event. The song she created for the children to sing integrates EMDR therapy, somatic exercises and relaxation techniques to help the fear and tension of the warnings move through the children's bodies, and hopefully freeing them from some of the terror.



I am very inspired by this video. I wonder, what simple ways can we each use in our lives and with those whose lives we touch to gently reshape the ways we experience something, decreasing the impact of fear and unknowing?