Dairy lesson

Today I had the pleasure of teaching at St Joseph ... first, their begindergarten class.  (This is a class for young 5 year olds, and I was excited to be there, because I love words smashed together to make new words.)

I read to them from my favorites Extra Cheese Please, Mozzarella's Journey from Cow to Pizza, Milk: From Cow to Carton,and How Did That Get in My Lunchbox? The Story of Food. 

I quizzed them individually after and gave them a 'Got Chocolate Milk' slap bracelet when they got it right.  They drank chocolate milk, got their milk coloring book and crayons, and were generally adorable.

I walked into the kindergarten class and heard, "You're my soccer teacher!"  A different boy said, "You're my swimming teacher!"  The class teacher said, "You teach a lot of things."  (You live in the same town long enough, and you'll have taught everyone something!)

In this lesson, I got one of my favorite things about this age.  When I ask for questions, everyone has one ... but it's never actually a question.  It's a really long story about the time they went to a farm.  I love it - it makes me laugh.  We had a great discussion.

After we were done, the teacher said, "Well, even I learned something today!  I didn't know a cow had FOUR stomachs!"  

A student said, "There's a monkey that has four stomachs, too."  (I looked it up later.  Proboscis monkeys have a four-chambered stomach.  What an odd-looking creature ... so I learned something too.)

And we filled all of the kids' stomachs with chocolate milk.  Only one person spilled, and it wasn't a student.  Sorry!  

Meanwhile, back on the farm ... the story is, IT'S COLD!  16 degrees tonight when I came in.  So it's all the regular farm work as usual, just with tons of layers, cold faces, and even colder hands.  It's snowing, too, which slows everything down as usual.  Buckle down!  We're in for another cold winter, I guess ... seeing as how right now it's still fall!

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