Chizuko Nishimata, a member of the “Can Do” Street production team, recently interviewed a second grade teacher in her native Japan. The purpose of the interview was to explore how Japanese teachers help their students to make good choices. Chizuko shares her findings in the following post.

In Elementary schools in Japan, there is a subject called “Dotoku”, which means “Moral” This class is usually held once a week. It teaches children very similar lessons to what “Can Do Street” offers. There are many educational TV shows and books for young children that are used as instructional materials.

During my interview with the teacher, she shared how she teaches this subject to her 2^nd grade class. She said, “I always ask the children questions after I present the lesson and get their answers before I share with them what are considered to be the right choices. Many times, children are very clever and often have the right answers. They come up with the right decisions by themselves.”

One time, when the teacher was using illustrations of two children fighting over snacks, there weren’t any words with the illustrations. So, she asked the students to make up a story about what was going on in the illustrations. She then asked each child to share what the message was in his or her story. She got lots of good feedback for continuing her lesson!

As I was ending the interview, I asked what she thought parents and teachers need always to remember about teaching life lessons. She answered, “The important life lessons need to be told repeatedly.  Even though children don’t seem to be paying attention, they are listening. Also, children watch us, their parents and teachers, very closely. We adults need to show them, by our actions, how to make good choices.”

From All of Us on “Can Do” Street!

Tiffany McCauley started The Gracious Pantry in August, 2008 as a means of keeping track of not only her recipes, but her attempts at losing weight. To her surprise, clean eating, as she calls it, did the trick when all other eating plans  failed her.Tiffany describes cleaning eating as,”The consumption of simple foods in their natural states. The avoidance of processed, boxed or otherwise “tampered with” foods.”

Down 40 lbs. to date, Tiffany is committed to a clean eating lifestyle and to sharing clean eating recipes with her readers.

Tiffany’s recipes are not only healthy, they are kid friendly! She shares one such recipe, “Clean Eating Pizzadias” in our Recipes section of the navigation bar above. As Tiffany puts it, “Hands down, this is my son’s favorite recipe.”

Visit the Gracious Pantry for recipes that are healthier, yet flavorful adaptations of some favorite foods such as eggnog and chili to name just a few at http://www.thegraciouspantry.com

Hemi Weingarten is a father of three who became interested in buying and preparing healthy food for his family when his children were just babies. As he tells it,” There are so many products. so many health claims, nutrients, and ingredients. So many promises by manufacturers. Despite the fact that I am a high tech exec with a graduate degree under my belt, I nonetheless found it difficult to make rational, information-based decisions for a task as simple as putting groceries into my shopping cart. During my trips to the grocery store I would be asking myself questions such as:

• Do my kids really need to drink juice?

• How much sugar is too much in a breakfast cereal?

• What are nitrates? Should we avoid all food colorings?

• Is just a tiny bit of trans fat OK?

• What about those yogurts especially designed for young children?

So, I decided to do something about it. I began to educate myself by  reading books and web articles about food systems, nutrition, and food preparation. At some point I decided that I need to share this information with other people, so that they too will be able to make better choices.That is when  Fooducate was born. Fooducate is a personal grocery advisor helping people choose the best food for their families.”

In the Fooducate Blog you’ll find tips and tricks to help make you a better shopper of nutritious food. Topics include nutrition fact labels, hard to pronounce ingredient names, “health claims”, and other marketing tricks to watch out for at the supermarket.

Mr. Wiengarten gives the following assurances, ” Fooducate has no relationship with the food, drug, diet or supplement industries. Nor does Fooducate sell, peddle, distribute or otherwise offer magic pills, secret celebrity diets, and/or exotic supplements.”

To visit Fooducate and learn more about this personal grocery advisor go to www.fooducate.com

To read the Fooducate Blog go to www.fooducate.com/blog/

Is an organization in Florida that is making a substantial difference for teachers and their students in need. They accomplish this by transferring their community’s surplus materials and resources free to teachers for their students who cannot afford to buy needed school supplies.

More than half the students in Central Florida can’t afford lunch let alone school supplies. In many cases, teachers spend between $500-$1,000 of their own money to buy supplies for students and classrooms each year.

A Gift For Teaching’s concept is simple, but so practical: local businesses take unwanted supplies or surplus merchandise that would otherwise get thrown away and donate it for distribution through the Free Stores for teachers. More than 8,673 teachers from Central Florida’s 324 public schools can then “shop” for free to make sure the more than 155,051 students in the community have what they need to learn. Continue Reading »