Mia came home from school yesterday, very excited to tell me that they are going to start cooking 2 hours a week (as a side note, I still don't know where they find time to do everything and get out by 12 each day - they do a fantastic job though). She did a lot of cooking when she was in the German kindergarten and has since loved to cook. Anyway...she told me that they needed to bring in some supplies (at this point, I am thinking along the lines of food, spices etc.). She then goes on to tell me that she needs to bring: an apron, a plastic container, and a sharp knife with a 15 centimeter blade. She further goes on to explain that it should be carried in a container (not in a plastic bag - because silly - then you might cut yourself :-)). I chuckled at the fact that in 3rd grade - everyone can handle this responsibility. Again, no note home - just trusting my child by sending her into school with a sharp knife, so she can learn life skills that she will need forever. In our system, you would be expelled for this. Why is it, that they can handle this and we can't? Every German I know can cook - and I mean REALLY cook. For example, I cook a casserole by dumping in cans of various items (ie. cream of mushroom soup, possibly rotel, canned spaghetti sauce etc...) The German way is to make everything by scratch with fresh vegetables, fresh herbs from the plants, they make pies from scratch (no purchased pie crusts ever), they can vegetables and jam etc. I always have wondered how everyone knows how to do everything. It must be a combination of learning at home AND at school - what a gift!
P.S. Somehow we got on the conversation that each teacher has a knife. O.K., I thought to myself - here it is... I ask, "Why do they have a knife?" Mia responds, "You are silly Mommy - of course they have a knife to cut our fruits and vegetables that come each week. (Each week, a truck comes and delivers a freshly picked vegetable or fruit of the day). You often see kids eating sweet peppers the same way you would eat an apple. If it is cucumber day, the teacher needs the knife to cut the cucumbers in thirds etc. Why else would you need a knife in school?
P.S.S. I explained to Mia that when she has to switch back to our school system someday, that if she brought a knife to school, she would get detention or suspension. She then asked me, "What is detention or suspension?" I explained to her what it was and then asked if she had anything like that in her school. She quickly responded - "No." I then asked, what happens if someone is misbehaving? She said that the teacher tells them to stop. I asked, "do they put names on the boards with checks or anything?" She said "they just get in trouble by being spoken by the teacher" - so simple!
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