Jenna's 4th Grade Cooking Experiment

In 

Its amazing what you can find when you finally have the time to sit down and organize all of the files on the computer.  Not only did I find several videos of the girls from the past 2 years that I had completely forgotten about, but I also found a picture file with Jenna's 4th grade school project. 

In October of 2010 Jenna's class was given the assignment to plan a dinner menu.  Jenna chose to make a chicken Fettuccine Alfredo dish with steamed broccoli and french bread.  As part of the assignment they had to complete a paper that covered several requirements.  The first requirement was that the meal had to cost less than $20 to prepare.  As part of this requirement we were supposed to go to at least 2 different stores to shop for our ingredients and price compare.  We chose Walmart, Harris Teeter, and Food Lion to do our shopping.

The second part of the assignment was to write up which food groups each of the dishes fell under.  I don't remember all of the other requirements for this assignment, but actually cooking the meal for the family was optional.  But I felt that this was a great learning opportunity for Jenna and she was super excited about making a special dinner for the family.  We made a special outing to go buy our ingredients and had enough left over in the budget for this project for Jenna to buy 1 bottle of sparkling grape juice to go with her meal.

This project quickly turned into a family affair, with Jenna doing all of the cooking while mommy watched and gave instruction, and daddy took pictures for the paper while Kaylee helped to set the table. 

We had so much fun with this project that we agreed to continue doing this every Monday, rotating which kid planned and prepared the meal, and for a few weeks we did just that.  But, we gradually got to where we were only doing it once a month, and then not at all.  So  as I look back at this moment that started a wonderful, although only temporary routine for our family, I plan to use 2013 to get back into having these special routines with the kids.