Family Friday

Kerlande was away for the weekend, so she had left me in charge of running Family Friday in the afternoon. The topic for the week was nutrition. All the kids gathered in the chapel/big classroom at 3:30. We sang 2 songs and prayed, then I asked the kids to name places in the Bible where food is mentioned. For a moment, they all stared at me blankly - who thinks of food as being a Biblical subject? Then they started shouting them out.
"The loaves and the fish!"
"The fruit of the spirit!"
"Daniel and his friends refusal to eat the king's food!"
"Joseph and Pharaoh's baker!"
"The last supper!"
"Leviticus - don't eat animals with cloved hoofs!"
"The forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden!"After we had established the fact that food was clearly important to God, I walked them through the food pyramid. We talked about what each food group does for your body and where you can find different vitamins and minerals. I divided the kids into teams of 5 or 6 and gave each team a menu of a day's meal. Their task was to evaluate each meal for its content (protein, calcium, vitamins, iron, fiber, caloric value) and then decide if they had gotten adequate nutrition on that day. They worked at it diligently, asking me and Miltha for help when they needed it. As expected, our Sunday menu turned out to be the most balanced and our corn and veggie day was the least balanced.
I think my favorite moment might have been at the beginning when I pointed out that candy is at the top of the pyramid. "That means you should only eat small amounts of it," I lectured. The response? Moans, groans, cries of disbelief, and generalized chaos.