to think that ds's homework is 'buy 6 slices of chicken and bring into school'

[zipzap]

All very trivial I know but...

Was a bit by ds1's homework (Y1) - to buy 6 slices of chicken and bring in on a given day of the week. The class is apparently doing healthy eating and they are going to make healthy sandwiches so everybody has been given something to bring in.

This just makes me on so many different levels. What if I couldn't have afforded it (OK, so I can but they don't necessarily know that) or couldn't get to the shop on the right day? And given that they have specified it is for healthy eating lessons, I'm hardly going to want to buy some pre-processed dodgy chicken slices that I wouldn't usually touch with a bargepole. Which means hunting out some in somewhere like M&S or Waitrose and even then they charge a fortune for bits of 'real' chicken and they still don't taste very nice albeit a bit better than the pre-processed stuff.

which also means going to the shop on mon or tues to buy it, both really busy week nights when ds has his activities and is really pooped and hates going to the shop whereas he's not too bad other nights.

which also means the night before I have to cook a chicken breast and slice it into 6 - and chances are that if they are expecting a pre-processed slice what I send will be all wrong size/shape for the sandwiches. Tuesday nights are always really busy so a bad night for doing extra things like this; I usually get organised and have a simple supper from the freezer or leftovers from day before but don't want to send in defrosted or 2 day old chicken.

DS barely eats chicken as it is; wondering how wrong it would be to send in a pot of hummus instead as ds will eat this by the pot if he can dip it so would be good to get him to eat in sarnies too, which if he tried them at school he just might start to do whereas I can just see that chicken might be a step too far.

would obviously run this past the teacher first but just wondered if I was unreasonable in asking her if it was OK to bring something different in or, if she wants a packet of processed sliced chicken, asking if ds can have the veggie option as I don't like the packet stuff?

Plus the last time they asked for Caribbean fruit to be sent in (all ready prepared and pre-chopped) they didn't actually eat it until a couple of days later by which time I would have thought it was potentially somewhat past it - not so bad with fruit but would be worried about the chicken (especially as when I went to get my box from the pile on the day the fruit was sent in, it was still sitting there and they hadn't got around to putting it in the fridge).

I know, it's trivial, but for some reason it seems to be the straw that has snapped this camel's back and I'm just venting.

Waitrose? M&S? Something fundamentally unhealthy about the words on label reading Tesco, Adsa, Morissons or Sainsburys is there?

Smacks of snobbery and unbridled competitiveness to me. Just get another packet of chicken when you do your usual shop. What's the problem?

As for they don't know you can afford it, no, they don't, that's why they have a hardship fund, so that when horribly expensive things like the French Exchange trip, an entire new rugby kit and your Waitrose chicken come up you can go to reception and ask for them to quietly fund it for your son and no-one will know.

Cookery classes means bringing in ingredients. Be that chicken for sandwiches or any other food. If you're that tight then perhaps you'd best send him up a chimney instead of letting him be educated.

blimey my ds(17) lives off that processed chicken shite

if you're so precious op can't you just buy slices from the deli counter? its hardly rocket science is it

Sorry I should have added
If somebody doesnt bring something in, what happens to the lesson?
I dont mean the teacher is lazy but planning lessons shouldnt mean depending on what the children bring in. How can the teacher prepare?
Maybe that is the way the school does it

Some things aren't worth embarrassing your child over. Just send in the chicken slices and stop over thinking it.

FWIW the school my dcs go to do food related activities but the teachers avoid all these problems by just asking each child in the class to bring in 50p or £1 and the teacher does the shopping - making sure she has what she needs and if we don't approve of it we have no idea what is there anyway

oh and if you think this is bad, wait until you get the list of ingredients for Food Tech lessons every week! Or will that be lazy teaching too?!

Sazm, you are right, there isnt much in the way of donations anymore on the cakes. I dont know why they brought it in but it came from county afaik, and they said its for food hygiene reasons.

YABU, just buy the chicken and send it in. Buy what chicken you want within your budget. Sounds like they split the ingredients between the children so some will be bringing bread etc.

We always had to take our own ingredients in for cooking lessons - just asking for one ingredient so that the children have a practical food lesson can hardly be classed as "lazy teaching". Schools have small budgets for extras like these and teachers often end up buying things themselves so its very reasonable to ask parents to contruibute.

Yes the teacher could have asked for donations but then I can imagine some parents simply wouldnt bother (plenty of posts on here moaning when schools ask for money), some would want to see value for money, others would moan at the choice of supermarkets etc. Poor teachers cant win.

If you don't want to provide a bit of food so the kids can learn about making a healthy sandwich, don't bother - the teacher will be covered for a the children who forget/parents won't co operate etc. And she'll cope quite easily with what is brought in and what she will probably provide herself.

Your DS might be a bit embarrassed he hasn't got anything though.

I think you need more important things to worry about

crikey. didn't think this would kick off quite such a big thread.

As I said initially - yes, I KNOW this is really trivial.

And of course:

• I'll send ds in with some chicken, I wouldn't dream of sending him in without it (unless I wake up and have one of those mornings and forget it but that's a completely different issue).
• I have no worries about them making sandwiches at school as part of their healthy eating teaching
• I have no worries about buying and sending ingredients in
• I'm fine about taking him to the shop and helping him to count out the money and do the maths of if it costs £3 then how much does each slice cost.
• I'll certainly be sending it into school in a cool bag in the middle of a bottle icepack (keep it really cold and there's always one in the fridge [white wine smiley].

It's just I read his homework book to see what he needed to do, it was late, I was tired and it just had some printed blurb about making sandwiches and bringing in one of the ingredients, with '6 slices chicken' written by the class teacher underneath. That was it, no further information about the chicken or if they wanted it to be shop bought and in packaging or home made or processed and it just got me thinking - as you do when you are overtired - what, in this instance, is a slice of chicken?

I know what a slice of chicken is if I am carving it off a roast for my plate. But I personally hate cold chicken sandwiches (leftovers here go into pasta/fricassee/supreme sauce rather than sarnies) so I never usually go near the cold chicken stuff in the deli section (hence only places I have seen the 'real' roast chicken slices in are waitrose and m&S, thanks for pointing out that others do it too), usually just see the dodgy looking chicken roll or whatever they call it and definitely don't think of that as healthy.

It's just with all the health and safety stuff around these days (real or imagined) it just set my mind racing around all the potential pitfalls around something as supposedly simple as chicken slice.

Just made me wish I'd been one of the people tasked with sending in bread. or cucumber. or tomatoes. or lettuce.

but not butter or marge - dh and I still disagree which is best least bad for you

see, it's late again, and I'm tired again and I'm still rambling. I'll shut up.

Depressingly, I think she means 6 slices of processed 'chicken'. I say 'depressingly' because I teach Food and Nutrition and I suspect she is equating ' healthy' with low fat - which is not a priority for 5 and 6 year olds. Moreover, as you've said, processed slices have hardly seen a chicken.

Plus it's a bit unreasonable to ask for a high risk food to be brought in without indicating how she's going to store it/ handle it. And you could have let the dog lick it before you sent it into school!! In other words, if she wants chicken slices for the class she should go and buy them and claim the money back or ask for a small donation.

I hope she's up on what healthy eating really means for young children. Great for them to be handling food but not great for them to be taught half truths or unhygienic methods.

Saturday evening was slow on MN

Butter is better :)

Marg is one step away from a chemical spread.

Does that help you?

chipping absolutely - I'm the one that thinks a little bit of butter is a good thing, dh thinks that marge is better despite it being manufactured chemicals the horrible taste

cat64 not worried about the bread - ds loves making bread (well sticking the ingredients into the bread machine and switching it on!) so would have let him choose a packet of flour (having checked for nuts obviously!) at the supermarket and let him 'make' it so he would have been happy...

campion yes, worry that in over-simplifying the healthy eating message and doing it based on adult requirements rather child ones would end up giving ds the wrong message. he's a rubbish eater and a skinny little thing so actually does need the butter on his sarnies for a bit of fat. Plus the whole processed food thing - will be very happy to be proved wrong, will see what he comes home saying about it on weds... mind you, he said that he spent the whole day today learning to play rock scissors paper with his class today so that's not necessarily going to be a particularly good indicator and I'm just going to end up !

Zipzap I agree with others that you are overthinking, but I'd have had the exact same reaction as you I think!

Sparkle you on the other hand sound like an unbearable snob!!!

I disagree with those who say this is lazy teaching- the teacher is trying to make the lesson a little more interesting by the sound of it, by giving the kids a bit of hands on experience.

And I disagree that she's wrong for teaching that processed meat can be part of a healthy diet. It sounds like there'll be lots of ingredients, and processed meat on sandwiches is a very common type of lunch...she may be planning on teaching that it's best to include a bit of salad, or some fruit, or to have brown/granary bread. We really cannot berate her teaching when we've no clue what the exact lesson is that she has planned.

I don't think you're overreacting. I don't think the teacher thought this one through very thoroughly.

When one of the DCs did something like this, they made 'sandwiches' from construction paper and loo rolls cut in half lengthways, with different colours and shapes of paper to indicate different sandwich fixings (scissors skills). They wrote healthy lunch menus (writing, spelling, understanding the lesson of healthy food) and took turns to man a sandwich stand (social, patience), put together sandwiches ordered by those acting as customers (fine motor skills, listening, following instructions), counted out 'money' and made change (adding and subtraction). Everyone got turn playing the different roles.

Nobody ended up with diarrhoea from food handled by little hands that were less than clean and many skills were learned, plus no real food was wasted -- because despite the lesson on healthy food, some children like their peanut butter sandwiches and do not want to try a salad and lunchmeat combo and would rather go hungry.

I think too much is being read into this simple request. It's not like anyone is going to judge you for what your child brought in: you just got her what you were asked to get her. If it was me, I would just buy a pack of standard chicken from my normal supermarket and then worry about more important things.

Blimey, thank goodness your kid's not in my class. God forbid you should come in and see us not sitting in regimented rows dully reciting the times tables ad infinitum. Just buy the chicke, and the the teacher Precious won't be eating it.

Yanbu.

I wouldn't want my child eating sarnies made out of dubious ingredients sat sweating in a schoolbag all morning. And that's without talking about the issues of plastic chicken or whether a parent has the money to spare for this sort of thing.

Math is right, it could have been done so much better.

And I have a 6 yr old who is always banging on about what's healthy or not, but all she seems to eat in school is pizza, potato or pasta with cheese...

at Dansmommy I'm also snobbish 'mommy' for mummy if you want to add that to the list, though you are forgiven if you're American!

snobbish about etc. I can write coherently, honest...

My son's state school requires him to bring a whole box load of stuff in for what they laughingly call 'Food Tech'. How on earth do you get "25 mils of milk" and "2 tablespoons of oil" packed securely into rucksack full of homework? And "one egg"? What planet are these people on?
Plus, having spent about five quid on ingredients, the resulting muffins, pizzas or whatever arrive home squashed, inedible and covered in pencil shavings.

I had something similar at my school but not about chicken. The parents were complaining about paying £10 each time for school trips, some refusing to pay but their kids still going. The head teacher arranged the next trip on pulic transport at the cost of £1 per child. There were plenty of helpers, the bus company were holding the bus if the kids were late and the letters were sent out. My daughter was really looking forward to it. This is until 25 parents out of 30 refused to let the kids go on public transport. The trip was cancelled. We went to see the head and told her that the kids who were able to go should be allowed to and if people were not happy with the rip they should keep their kids at home. She couldnt do this obviously but she did say that some of the parents who complained were the ones who never paid.

gapbear you've got me all wrong - I'd be horrified if I found a class of little ones sitting there bored chanting times tables.

I was more at myself because on the one hand a slice of chicken should be such a simple thing but I was so tired (and usually seem to be in state of sleep deprivation) that it became so complicated.

For what it's worth, the thing that made me finally lose it and burst into tears because I didn't think I could cope soon after ds1 was born was because I couldn't figure out what the recipe for cooled boiled water was for formula when I resorted to trying to get him to drink formula as I couldn't get him to breast feed and hadn't been able to express any milk.

See, I can cope with the tricky things, it's just the simple things that get me!

Fair enough zipzap - perhaps I was a bit crabby after Parents' Evening

Really you should be talking to your child's teacher though - I suspect most people wouldn't realise that the subject of chicken is a potential minefield. I certainly didn't! I'm sure if you explained your reasons to him / her, there wouldn't be a problem with you taking hummous or similar.

And to all those people horrified at the thought of food not being refrigerated at school - where do you think we keep the vital supply of milk for our IVs mugs of coffee?