Each month as I travel into classroom after classroom, and I always come away with learning something new. To start out, I introduce a new book to read to the Head Start participants, preschool, kindergarten, first grade and second grade students. Then we have to get all of our wiggles out by teaching them some new exercises to get them moving. And lastly we sample a new fruit or vegetable. With the food lesson we turn it into a science lesson and the children make observations about the fruit/vegetable-its outside appearance, whether it is sweet or not, how big the seed is inside, how it grows, etc. We compare it to other foods in its class, talk about its texture and what different food dishes we could make out of it, etc.

As the participation numbers have grown close to 300 students over the past couple of years and several teachers have switched positions, I still continue to get requests to bring the leap program into the local classrooms. A few years ago our school district offered the Two-Bite Club. This was a wonderful program similar to the leap program that had to be discontinued due to funding. But thanks to the Extension office we are able to bring life to your everyday fruits and vegetables. Many children in our community only see certain vegetables or fruit thanks to the free lunch program. By introducing a new one each month, the children are able to learn all about that one fruit or vegetable and hopefully can take what they learn and teach others at home. 

Recently I had a grandmother come up to me at the grocery store and she said aren’t you the vegetable lady that goes to the schools? And proceeded to tell me that her granddaughter is such a picky eater these days but recently she has been asking her to go to the grocery with her and they walk around and talk about the different fruits and vegetables that they see there. She stated that they even try out the new fruits or vegetables together as a family. 

So needless to say, it’s the small things that make you realize that really do make a big difference in someone’s life even if you don’t think you have that significant of a roll. The impact we have on our participants really do have an effect on their future health, even if they refer to you as the “vegetable lady.”