It was healthy eating week.
The children learned how to improve their health, how to fend off colds and how to keep their energy up throughout the day. We ran workshops, made a fruit salad together and tasted fruit and vegetables blindfolded.
The blindfolded tasting is, of everything we did, the activity with the best return. The reason a child refuses a vegetable usually has to do with how it looks rather than how it tastes: the colour, the shape, the way it sits on the plate. With their eyes covered only taste and smell remain, and a child who has just correctly identified something they claimed not to like suddenly has a good reason to try it once more, this time seeing what they are eating.
The fruit salad works on something else. It is a proper recipe, with steps that have to be followed in order, slices to cut and portions to share out among everyone — that is, maths, patience and teamwork, hidden inside a bowl.
As for energy through the day, the conversation was very concrete: why some snacks leave you sluggish while after others you can keep playing. It is the kind of connection a child can check for themselves, as early as the next day.
A week of learning about health in which there was a good deal of cooking, tasting and laughing.