Day 91 - Roast Chicken Wrapped in Bacon by JoeGray, on Flickr

Day 91 - Roast Chicken Wrapped in Bacon by JoeGray, on Flickr

The more I read about what’s ailing our country’s farming, marketing, health care, food processing and purchasing economies, the more I hear the same refrain: “No one is teaching our children how to cook.” I think it goes deeper than that. Parents are busy to the point of outsourcing the food preparation which many never learned themselves. How are we going to transfer skills to the next generation that might be dormant in ourselves? This isn’t something we can send the kids to school to learn, either. The state of the overburdened school system and failure of the school lunch program is proof enough for me that nutritional education is not going to happen in the schoolroom.

We are a homeschooling family. For the last 19 years we’ve taught our children at home. It’s a full-time job and ministry, to be sure, and I’m not convinced that it’s something every family could or should undertake. But, to some degree, all families homeschool. If you’ve potty-trained a child, you’ve taught them. If they speak the language spoken in your home, they probably learned most of that from you. Why not spend a few minutes at mealtime encouraging your children toward a healthy lifestyle?

To make it as easy as possible for you, I’m starting a new section of my blog dedicated to “lessons” your family can do together. Some will take a couple minutes, others will be longer and more involved. Some will include worksheets, labs, discussion points, games and other fun things to do. I plan to take a multi-disciplinary approach, including work in math, science, literature, social studies, geography, history and art. Some will be obviously simple, others more complex.

But, I want to warn you: this is a blog, not a textbook! Your input will be what really makes this project work. What do you want to teach? Learn? Do? Check back later this week for Lesson 1: Tastes Like a Holiday.