Field trip to Food Dance

It was an exciting start to Garden Camp today. There was a lot of rain last night and branches down outside. The roof was also being repaired, but our part of the building was fine. We started with breakfast, journaling, and writing a list of questions to ask when we get to Food Dance. Yes, today we went to Food Dance Restaurant in downtown!

Before leaving for the field trip, we worked on the flower beds in front of the school and planted many daisies. We also pulled weeds. Our school is looking better every day and we are doing our part! After cleaning up, it was time to leave for our field trip!

Here is a video that shows what we did at Food Dance.



Food Dance buys as much of their food and products from local and Michigan farmers as they possibly can. They are doing what we learned about yesterday: buying from local places helps to keep money and jobs in our local area! This was especially interesting to us as gardeners because we are growing fresh vegetables and fruits. These are the kinds of things a business like Food Dance would buy for their restaurant.

The nice people at Food Dance gave us all a brownie to take back to school to enjoy for our afternoon snack. It was extra neat to eat them because we knew they were made from locally grown ingredients. While we enjoyed the brownies, we listened to Miss Smith read out loud to us. We also picked pictures and wrote captions for our story book with Mr. Gettig.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, which means Happy Birthday America! See you next week!

The importance of local

After breakfast and journaling, we went outside to work in the garden. There is always something to do out there! Our hard work is starting to show as we see the tomatoes, carrots, peppers, strawberries, and other plants starting to get bigger...even bigger than they were just last week!

When our gardening was done, we went to the front of the school to work in the flower beds near the main entrance of the school. We pulled weeds, trimmed bushes, and planted many pretty flowers like hostas. It is a good feeling to know that we are making our school look better all the time.

After cleaning up and enjoying a snack, we played a game. Mr. Johnson gave half of us tiny marshmallows and half of us pieces of spaghetti. We also got post-it notes that represented money. We could buy more marshmallows and spaghetti from each other or from Mr. Johnson. In fact, Mr. Johnson sold them to us at a lower cost. He said that we represented the local people and he represented the big store. That's why he could sell them to us cheaper. Here is a video that shows what we did.



Our goal was to build the tallest building we could using those materials. But since no one had all the materials to start with, we had to buy from each other and Mr. Johnson. At the end, some of us had buildings that stood and others did not. But the real lesson came when Mr. Johnson showed us that he, the big store, had all of the money! He showed us how when we buy locally, the money and the jobs stay in our local area. But the big store is owned by someone who doesn't even live here and so all of the money left our local area, or "economy". We all agreed that buying locally whenever we can is better than buying from a big name store.

After lunch and silent reading, we all wrote thank you notes to Mrs. Gardner for the dirt pudding and juice she brought us last week. It was very tasty!

Tomorrow, we are taking a field trip to a local restaurant. Check our blog tomorrow to see pictures and read all about it!