A Day on Dairy...

Hey all! I am so excited to be sharing that our new unit this month in our Mother Goose Time curriculum is health and nutrition. This week, the kids and I studied the importance of the different food groups in our diet. Our very favorite day was the day spent studying the "dairy" food group. This subject is very near and dear to my heart, as I was raised on a dairy farm in Oregon. My dad still owns and operates the dairy and we get to visit on occasion. My family is very involved in the business and I was so excited to share some of that with my own children. We had so much fun studying cows and how important milk is to our nutrition.

I think this was one of our favorite projects yet! The kids and I got a silly giggle out of the glove used as an udder and the four stomaches included in the project.  They each have their own cow to play with now, and are having so much fun telling me facts about a cow. The little cows turned out so cute!!

"The Milk Makers" was the suggested reading for this day, and it is one of my favorite books on how milk goes from a cow to the home.  I even learned so things when I read this book to my kiddos! Definitely look into this for reading to your children, if you haven't yet.

Another favorite activity was the STEAM station activity! The kids pretended to milk a cow by squeezing water from a small hole in a glove.  What an absolute hoot! We were all giggling and having so much fun.  The kids realized they had to release the glove in order for it to fill with water again, so they could squeeze out more... very similar to milking a cow!

We were fortunate to be able to recently visit my dad's dairy farm, and the kids had an absolute blast. They got to see the calves and see how the calves are fed. They also got to play in some of the "cotton seed," which is part of a cow's food. Here are some really sweet photos and videos of our visit.

Now I'm going to hop on my soap box for a moment... I am so so glad Mother Goose Time included a day on dairy for our curriculum. Our current culture strongly believes that cow's milk is unhealthy for our children and they could not be more wrong! There are nine essential amino acids we need to eat through our diet, and milk is one of the few foods that contains all nine of them.  I wish that I had so much more time to educate everyone, but please check out the benefits in this photo, and also on the website: https://odncouncil.org/resources/. I am lucky enough to have a sister who works for the Oregon Dairy and Nutrition Council and has shared MANY resources with me! Please feel free to message me if you have any more questions.

Thank you, Mother Goose Time, for the wonderful opportunity to educate my children on the importance of milk!