This week, I planned to make smoothies with the children to talk about healthy habits since half of our group has been sick in the last few weeks. Many toddlers actually told me they drank smoothies with mommy and daddy which was a very nice surprise.
It all started with an intense session of hand washing since this project wouldn’t be cooked. The kids did great at keeping their hands on the table (aka not in their mouth/nose/pants) but the few that couldn’t resist were promptly sent back to the sink, enough to encourage the other ones to be extremely mindful of their hand placement. So I set up the table and showed them what we would put in our smoothies: bananas, kale, frozen strawberries and orange juice. To make sure they would be involved in the process (since smoothies don’t usually need much assistance), I gave half the group plastic knives to slice the bananas and the other half was asked to shred the kale (two good fine motor skills for toddlers). We then placed it all in the blender (generously donated by one of our class parents!). I warned the children about the loud noise and told them there was no reason to be scared. I also told them we were making monster smoothies (to explain the green color) to turn into silly monsters.
Everything was going perfectly well until the blender made an unexpected sound. I took it off the stand and realized it broke in the exact same way ours did (we have the same model at home). Dang! It was time to improvise. It would have been easy to just toss out our half-blended mixture but, instead, I asked the children: “Who wants to taste monster food?” Approximately half of them agreed to taste it, and two of them couldn’t get enough of it. It would be easy to see our experience as a failure but I would rather see it as an extra learning experience for myself as well as the kiddos. Something doesn’t go as planned? No worries, we can still make the best of it!
In other news, I have already ordered the replacement piece off of Amazon. It helps that I had to buy the exact same one a few months ago…I simply went to my past orders and re-ordered it.
Next week’s project will be cornbread muffins as we introduce Thanksgiving to the toddlers.
The Hungry Quebbie 