Food for thought: what is really meant by "food curriculum"?

Over the past few weeks I have been thinking a lot about my place of work, and how much I value what we offer children. 


One of the biggest points of pride for me is our culture around food.  Our children come from a variety of food environments.  Some come from families with lots of access to nutritious food, and information about what is required for children to be healthy.  Others come from families with little access to this information, or to the quality or quantity of food needed to adequately meet the nutritional needs of their children.  Our program is lucky enough to get funding from the state, reimbursing us for the meals that our cook (Erinn) expertly and lovingly prepares for the children each day. (check out her blog at: www.bcslunchlady.blogspot.com)  I am grateful for this funding, and appreciate the fact that Vermont is trying to make nutrition a priority for young children.


With all of that said, I also find it off-putting how narrowly (and in my opinion falsely) the state defines curriculum.  I am concerned by the promotion of activities rather than experiences and relationships as being the primary way that children learn. And I am frustrated with the lack of recognition of what happens at our center as a valid form of  curriculum.  


A glimpse into our environment:
As you walk into the toddler kitchen (where 18 1-2 year olds gather to eat snack and lunch each day) you see multiple 11x14 photos of the children, taken during a variety of food experiences (at our weekly summer trips to the farmers market, in the lunch room, cutting fruit, spreading jam on toast, eating, setting the table etc.)  


One of the walls in the kitchen is painted with chalkboard paint giving children the chance to write/draw what we will be eating for snack and lunch on a given day.  On part of this wall are black and white photos of the children at mealtime. In these photos they are talking, eating, and laughing.  


On one of the shelves is a laminated sheet with questions generated by the children that they can ask each other at mealtimes (i.e. what is your favorite part of this meal? What was your favorite part of the morning? What book are you going to read at rest time?). 


The rest of the shelves are filled with natural materials for children to use in building centerpieces for the table when it is time to help set the table and prepare for meals. 

From the window in the kitchen you can see outside onto the playground where there is documentation of the garden that the children planted the year before.  There are photos of them hauling the compost from the big pile in the parking lot and spreading it into the dirt on the playground.  There are  images of them watering the garden, picking, looking at, cutting up, and tasting the cucumbers that the garden produced.  


Also visible from the window is the window box full of basil and other herbs that the children grew and tasted (along with tomatoes that they bought at the store during an outing, and cut up themselves).


In the classroom there is a kitchen area with varying food related items (wooden fruit, cupcakes with removable frosting that can be decorated, bread dough made by the children, many containers, rolling pins, and lots of other tools including plates, tea-cups and napkins to help facilitate dramatic play related to food).  


On the shelf there are more photos of children cooking, using dough, and participating in dramatic play "parties" and "dinners".  There are also observations posted on the walls with the conversations the children have had during mealtimes.  


A glimpse into a mealtime conversation:


4.3.12    


Five children are sitting together with a teacher in the kitchen.  The table is set, and there are bowls of purple cabbage, rice, oranges, and chicken.


Child 1: I love cabbage!
Child 2: I love cabbage too!
Child 3: I don't.
Child 4 [to the teacher]: This is my favorite kind of rice.  Did you know you can make curry rice too?
[Child 5 (an ELL student) takes a bite of the cabbage]: It's crunchy!
Child 4: I tasted it, and I thought it was sweet.
[Child 1 has eaten 6 slices of orange.  She looks over at the table of younger toddlers who are having grapes, and says to the teacher]: They are having grapes for their fruit.  So we can have lots of oranges! [she looks over to another table of older toddlers] Hey, does anyone at your table want oranges?
Child 6 [who is sitting at the other table]: I don't.  


What I see:
In this conversation there are many things that stand out for me.  The first of which is how much of the conversation is being driven by the children.  When given a choice children (and I think adults too) will talk about what they are interested in, and it is clear from this conversation that they are interested in food.  They love to describe the taste, and the texture of the food they are eating. 


It is also an opportunity for them to learn about themselves, and others. They have the capacity to decide what they like and what they don't like, to try new things, and to stick with their own preferences.  They are learning that it's okay to disagree.  


One child makes the connection between food he eats at home (curry rice) and the food they are eating now.  Another child uses this time as a way to take care of others, making sure that everyone has a chance to have some oranges (even though, or perhaps because they are her favorite).  


There is so much more to this mealtime experience than classification of food, and ability to repeat the names of fruits or vegetables (which you may have also noticed happened as well.  Without teacher prompting). 


A glimpse into a professional development training offered by the state:
The woman who supervises our food program arrives, and after walking through the spaces just described settles into the preschool kitchen (an environment also rich in reminders of children's experiences with food) to talk to us about "food curriculum".  She tells us she is going to teach us some ways of getting children to learn about food (I wonder if she has taken the time to look around at all).  She then proceeds to pass out papers with the outlined shape of a squash drawn on them, along with some squash seeds.  She tells us that we can practice doing this "fun" activity and then offer it as a way for the children in our classrooms to learn about squash. Then she instructs us to glue the squash seeds inside the outlined shape of the squash on the paper. (I am dubious that paper and glue have anything to do with eating squash... and find it hard to participate in this "fun" activity.)  


Several teachers make patterns within the outline using multiple types of seeds to create visually appealing versions of the squash.  When we have finished she looks around at the variety of squashes and then tells us that we should encourage children to fill in the squash entirely, using the seeds from only the one particular type of squash, to help them understand that this is the type of squash that it grows. (I am still at a loss for the connection she is seeing between this piece of paper with a shape on it, and the experience of eating a buttery well prepared piece of summer squash... or the process of growth for that matter.  The materials I associate with the growth of vegetables are earth, water, sunshine, and the outdoors...)    


At the end of the two hour training (after we "learn" several more activities, including some "new" songs about how things grow) she again walks through our classrooms, and past our documentation, and as she is about to leave she says, "We really do recommend that every program we give funding to try to implement some kind of food curriculum."


So what...
Over the course of this training I went from being frustrated, to being offended by the the complete and utter lack of recognition of the opportunities we provide and the relationship that our children have with food as a valid form of "curriculum".  


As teachers we work hard to make all of our environments not only educational, but meaningful and nourishing to children, and I feel that our food environment is one of the strongest ones at our entire center.  We understand that children learn from experience, and I am concerned that the people who are charged with "educating" teachers about nutrition don't seem to understand that children benefit more from the opportunity to stick their hands in soil, plant seeds in a garden, pick the squash when it finally comes up, cut it open and find the seeds inside, help prepare it, and enjoy tasting it in the company of friends, than they do from sitting still in a chair and being told how to glue seeds to a piece of paper.  


The frustration that I experienced from that training has driven me to create a book (that will hopefully be for sale soon) that shows the culture of food that exists at our center, and frames environment, relationship, and experience as an integral part of what I/we define as curriculum.  


I believe that through our food program our children have developed a deep and meaningful knowledge of food.  Listening to our children talk during meals, watching them taste (and often finish) all the food on their plates, seeing their deep interest in the growing process, their curiosity about ingredients of food, their sheer joy at sitting down to eat together, and their constant desire to share the experience of eating with others, to me, is the most important evidence of not just learning, but a life well lived, which is for me the top priority.