Lemonade War Update

Swim team practice was cancelled for my kids on Friday afternoon, leaving us with a few unscheduled hours. Mostly we loafed around the house reading and/or playing with plastic army men. I read The Lemonade War and have been urging my older kids to read it ever since. That sort of makes no sense as they are the ones who selected it in the first place. I know they will eventually read it, but I want to discuss it with them. There is some great stuff in there about marketing and sibling rivalry. There was one unresolved bit at the end, the theft of some money, which I found dissatisfying. I like justice to be served, I suppose. Other than that, I strongly recommend The Lemonade War for second through fifth grade readers.

Foodie Friday: Lemonade

School is about to let out for the year here in New Jersey so we visited the library yesterday to stock up on summer reading material. When my kids are on summer vacation they like to read about other kids on summer vacation. That makes sense, but unfortunately it led me to allow a book to come home which promises to be like inviting a migraine headache for a visit. It is Jacqueline Davies' The Lemonade War. It is about a brother and sister who engage in an all-out lemonade stand war. Apparently we will also learn a bit about the multiple intelligences as the brother Evan is "people-smart" and his sister Jessie is "math-smart," according to the back cover. I think some math, advertising, and economics get thrown in as well. Each chapter of this book written for third through fifth grade readers opens with the definition of a marketing term such as "joint venture" and "underselling." All in all, it sounds like a good summer read for my kids. Here's the rub: they are going to start begging me to help them to set up a lemonade stand. I don't know what it is about my children, but the idea of selling food to people fascinates them. My daughter is not and never was a Girl Scout. She has no interest in badges, campfires, and sit upons. But once a year when her friends show up with their cookie order forms she turns green with envy. And every summer all three kids campaign for a lemonade stand. We live on a busy road with no sidewalk and hardly any shoulder. It would be one dangerous and probably unprofitable business venture. Besides, I want to spend my summer lazily sipping Arnold Palmers (equal parts lemonade and iced tea) not mixing them up for strangers. Hopefully they can live their entrepreneurial dreams vicariously through Evan and Jessie as they read The Lemonade War. There is also a website at www.lemonadewar.com for kids and teachers with recipes and ideas that might be worth visiting if they enjoy it.

What The World Eats for Foodie Friday

This is a long post, but I cannot restrain myself. This book is too amazing to be brief.

Back when I was teaching high school English literature, creative writing, and journalism, a social studies teaching friend of mine and I used to say we could easily use The New York Times in place of textbooks to teach our courses. I don't think this was a lack of humility on our parts; rather we felt the Times provided such a daily wealth of material that we'd have more than enough from which to lesson plan. Sometimes at lunch we'd point out articles or features that would be great to use in other disciplines as well, let's say an article from the Science Times section for a health class. It was a fun mental exercise.

Recently, I've come across a book that I am convinced every school teacher in America, from kindergarten through high school could make use of. It wouldn't substitute for a textbook, but it would be a wonderful supplementary material. What the World Eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Alusio could easily be used to help teach biology, chemistry, math, nutrition, geography, sociology, writing, public speaking, art, music, economics, world languages, health, and much more.

What the World Eats is a child friendly version of 2005's Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. Peter Menzel took stunning photographs and Faith D'Alusio wrote the informative text for this gorgeous book in which they visit 25 families in 21 countries to document what each family eats in a typical week. Each chapter begins with a photograph of a family surrounded by their groceries for a week. To look at those 25 portraits alone is fascinating. My children and their friends who have picked up this book immediately begin comparing the diets of these families to their own. They quickly notice that families from countries with lower incomes rely heavily on grains, fruits and vegetables. They easily see that families from wealthier countries consume more meats, dairy products, packaged foods and beverages.

Each chapter includes interviews with the families and detailed grocery lists, broken down by type, cost, and quantity. Each chapter places the featured country on a world map and presents facts such as population, average income, and life expectancy. There are also photos of the families obtaining the food (whether at a supermarket, open air market, or on a seal hunt), preparing it, and eating it. This too is quite enlightening to young readers.

As I've said, What the World Eats would make a great addition to any classroom library, but it would be equally at home on a coffee table or older child's bookshelf. Its information about nutrition and the global economy are timely and valuable, and the photographs are truly captivating.

My son happened to read the author blurb on the book's jacket and is very excited to check out another book by Menzel and D'Alusio, winner of the 1999 James Beard Award for References and Writings on Food. It's called Man Eating Bugs: The Art and Science of Eating Insects. Talk about a catchy title!

Kindergarten Math and Alcohol Consumption

My youngest son is currently in kindergarten. He has a fantastic teacher. She is creative, energetic, experienced, organized, and fun. She also encourages parents to come in and volunteer with the class. I love going in there even though it often requires a few Excedrin on the way out. Obviously, I enjoy getting a glimpse of my son's day. I also think it is smart of the teacher to use parent volunteers to work one on one with the kids on crafts or to make copies or cut out project pieces. freeing up her time for the important business of teaching. Recently I showed up in the class for my scheduled volunteering, but the classroom was empty. The kids must have been on their way back from gym or art class. I stood awkwardly in the middle of the room for a minute or two. I certainly wasn't going to try to wedge myself Goldilocks-like in one of the kids' chairs, and it probably would have been too much of an invasion of space to sit in the teacher's chair. I wandered around the room and ended up in the Math Center. It held various manipulatives, toy money and clocks, and some interesting books. My favorite was Sorting, part of the Math Counts series by Henry Pluckrose. It reminded me of the kinds of conversations I should be having with my kindergartner but sometimes forget about in the rush to get everything done. We could talk about the groceries and how to sort them. By color? By temperature? By size? How should we sort laundry? Another way to introduce those mathematical concepts of classifying, sets, and subsets is to play the old game "Which one doesn't belong?" That used to be my favorite part on Sesame Street (Sing it with me. "One of these things is not like the others...").

That same wonderful teacher who allows me to come volunteer and poke around her classroom bookshelves sent home a neat "Thanksgiving Math" assignment last week. It was designed to get the children to see the numbers in any situation, even Thanksgiving dinner. Some questions from the assignment:

*How many people were at your Thanksgiving dinner? Children? Adults? In all? (24, by the way)

*How many turkeys did you have?

*How much did the turkey(s) weigh?

*What was the house number where you ate?

*What time did you eat dinner?

*How many kinds of pies were there?

God bless my family, my sister-in-law's family, and friends who patiently helped Ethan with the homework and allowed themselves to be interviewed about their favorite part of the turkey for the Turkey Graph section of the assignment. Let me say this about them though, it's a good thing the "Thanksgiving Math" sheet didn't ask these questions:

*How many bottles of wine were finished? Red? White? In all?

* How many beer bottles went out to the recycling bin?

*How many sambuca shots were thrown back?

Had those questions been asked and answered honestly, Ethan's counting skills would have gotten a good workout but there might have been a decrease in my appearances on the parent volunteer schedule.