Red apples and beets, orange butternut squash, yellow peppers and mangos, green kiwi and cucumbers, blue blueberries, purple eggplant, white cauliflower—all of these fruits and vegetables can come together to create a beautiful rainbow of colors on one’s plate. Junior Kindergarten students learned all about these different colored foods during Book Bites on Tuesday.
What is Book Bites? It’s a dietician-developed program offered by our partners at FLIK Independent School Dining. Several books in a series are paired with discussion questions and food activities. On Tuesday, Chef Olga Goumas, Assistant Director of Dining Services – FLIK, read the book I Can Eat a Rainbow by Olena Rose to our two JK classes. « This book encourages children to eat a variety of foods of all the colors of the rainbow so they can grow and play, » Chef Olga said.
After reading the book, the students traveled to the Beasley Dining Hall, where they sampled various fruits and vegetables of different colors and made their own rainbow plates. The food was sampled in rainbow order as our Beasley friends tried different items together. What fun it was to see what they thought about the various menu items! Then, the students were given Book Bites bookmarks to take home following the activity.
« This is our second year doing the Book Bites program with Olga and the kids have always loved it, » said Bridget Wallace, Junior Kindergarten Homeroom Teacher. « I was so impressed with how brave the kids were! Many of them tried so many different things. We even found out that we have champion beet eaters! They asked for seconds and thirds. Even if they didn’t try something today, our hope is that with exposure in a safe and fun environment, maybe some of our pickier eaters might expand their palates eventually! »
The program certainly brought a lot of fun to the plates of our JK students. « Book Bites exposes children to a diverse culinary vocabulary, enriching their language skills as they explore words related to cooking, ingredients, and flavors, » Chef Olga elaborated. « It provides an opportunity to expand student palates and understanding of nutrition through food-guided activities. I hope that integrating culinary education into a reading program will promote cross-curricular learning, connecting literature, science, and cultural studies all through food! »
We can’t wait to see these students continue to try new things in the dining hall as their palettes add more colors to their individual fruit and veggie rainbows!