Wow!  Where has the term gone? We are nearly half way through term 2 already! 

You will have to excuse my tardiness in blogging. I was never a pen pal sort of person in the traditional letter writing days (my overseas friends cheered if they got a letter once a year) , and my father sends me an email every two months to prod me to send him one, so regular blogging and diary writing is not natural for me!  Do get your kids to remind me to do this, and I will get the kids to prod me into doing this regularly, too.

We have been studying food and nutrition this term.  Harold the Giraffe came to school in the first week and taught the kids about their body and what the organs do, and we looked at the food groups, and what quantities we should be consuming of each. Your children were very knowledgable about this.  

Harold also strutted his stuff round school on the day so kids could come and ask him questions, hug him and shake his hoof... Just like Hollywood and Bollywood, we now have Giraffe-hood!

            Rebecca McNaughton is a food nutritionist who works at New World in Nelson. 

She visited our school and talked to the children about 'secret sugars' and how to read the packaging to find the quantity and content of ingredients in products. We found some surprising results when we compared two boxes of cereal.  Muesli and fruit bars that appear healthy actually have lots of 'secret sugars' in them. 

 We followed up Rebecca's visit with a class trip to New World where the children examined the labels on a range of products and compared the data to see which products were the healthiest option. They worked in small groups on this and discovered some new fruits in the process..

Next it was off to Domino's pizza to meet Chris and see the process they go through to make pizza. We all squished into the tiny premises but none of us touched the $100,000 oven that was 400 degrees and could burn you!  

We looked at the way they fold the boxes up from flat. Chris told us why they used cardboard. It is good for the environment because it can be recycled, soaks up the grease and steam easily so you don't get soggy pizza! 

We looked at the advertising they did, what worked best and at the information they put on the box.  He also talked to us about health and hygiene and what they need to wear as well as how they check the temperatures. They use water bottles with thermometers to make sure it is an even temperature all the time. 

Next it was down the back to the dough department.  They make their bases fresh daily. 

It is put through a machine to make it flat. We weren't allowed to touch it because it makes fingers go flat too if they get stuck in it. Sometimes it will pull them right off so we just watched. 

Then we got to watch an assistant make a pizza but we weren't allowed to eat one in case any of us had food allergies (Management said if any of us got sick or died  there it wouldn't look good for the company.)  We had a great time and learnt lots even if we didn't get to eat a pizza.

Back in class we were given a "Pizza Brief" for making our own pizzas. We were told about oil use and how it is a finite resource. It may be all used up in our generation so it is important to reduce the amount of oil we use. A lot of oil is used in fuel in transport so part of our criteria is that we can only use pizza toppings that can be grown in the Nelson region.  As part of food nutrition our pizza can only be vegetarian or fruit or a mix. We have to have 5 different food colours and our challenge is to make it healthy! 

We are working in groups of 3 on this. We create our own brand name, box and recipe. We are looking at original sauces and toppings to get extra colour and flavour into it. One group is using orange marmalade as their sauce. Another is going to mash kumara and spread it on.  Our topping don't have to be cheese either. They can be like crumble topping on fruit desserts. 

Mr Wemyss is going to judge our box design, creativity and taste test them all. The winning group gets a $50 voucher to spend at New world and will have their recipe published on the school website!

                                          Next week we start cooking them so it is all GO!