Family Soup

Our Family Feast day was a great event on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. We invited adult family members and younger siblings to come enjoy friendship soup with us. We made the soup by having each student and teacher bring in a vegetable that was chopped. We added these to basic chicken stock and simmered it on the stove. Simmer was the word of the day.

This year our soup contained carrots, celery, jeruselem artichoke, purple cauliflower, corn, parsnips, green beans, jicama, onion, potatoes, yellow squash, and probably some other veggies I am forgetting now. We also enjoyed some chocolate chip banana bread that the kids made the week before when I was in Washington DC. If you are interested in learning what I learned at the National Association for the Education of Young Children Conference, you can read it on the Early Childhood Programs blog.

While we enjoyed the culinary delights of preschool, we also celebrated Thanksgiving with Tasha and Erica from the Bookmobile with our donation check for $450.00. It was wonderful to share are soup and celebration with them.
We also saw a video of "I Can Do It," a song the kids have learned this fall. Beth also read I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie, which has become a Family Feast tradition. Thanks to everyone who helped sing "A Thanksgiving pie, which was really too dry. Perhaps she'll die." Beth's voice was fading fast.

We also collected all of the food that we used in our grocery store this month in order to give it to the Fairfield Food Shelf. When we gathered all of the cans, boxes, jars and bags, it filled three boxes. The kids helped haul it over to the food shelf and we let Nancy know it was there for the next pickup.

And the winner is...

The votes are tallied and the result is in. The recipient of our $450 donation from the money we made selling Snowflake Fudge is (Drum roll please.......)

The Franklin-Grand Isle Bookmobile!!!!

The other organizations that were in the running for the donation included The Fairfield Recreation Department (and playground committee), The Vermont Special Olympics, The Bent-Northup Memorial Library, Fletcher Allen's Children's Hospital, Ronald McDonald House in Burlington, and The Fairfield Center School Music Deparment.

The kids learned a little bit about each of these organizations and the good work they do. Then they each voted for their two favorites in the first round. The top two vote-getters went into the final round and everyone got one vote for their favorite. The runner up, in the end, was the Ronald McDonald House of Burlington. 

Beth has invited the Bookmobile staff to join us for our Thanksgiving soup on September 24. At that time, we will present them with the check for our donation. We are thrilled to be able to support the Bookmobile and the great work they do bringing library resources to the rural communities in the northwest corner of Vermont.

What does Isabella do on the weekend?

Since Isabella does not visit anyone's house on Thursday and stays at the preschool over the weekend, we had been wondering what she does when we are gone. The preschoolers found out the answer to that question on Tuesday. When we started meeting on Tuesday, there was a blanket and a pillow sitting on the couch. I asked the kids if any of them had carried it down from loft. No one had. Hmmm....a mystery!

The kids took guesses as to who may have brought the blanket down. Some thought maybe it was a robber. We figured that was probably not the case because nothing was missing and it looked like the only thing he may have took was a nap. We checked with Carol and Grandma Freda and neither of them had been around. So, the mystery remained unsolved.

The kids went on to play for the day. At closing meeting, when we checked in Isabella's backpack to make sure she had everything to go home with another child, we noticed these pictures in the album.

One of the kids said, "It was Isabella who brought the pillow and blanket down to the couch. Apparently, Isabella is pretty busy in out classroom over the weekend, but it is clear she misses us. Is she looking out the window waiting for us to come back?