What do brown bananas have to do with homeschool?

What do brown bananas have to do with homeschool? In our family, a lot!

Every time we go to our local store, we see if they have any "reject" bananas. These are the ones that have been sitting too long to be desirable for people to purchase, but they are completely fine for consumption. They aren't even ripe enough for banana bread yet! Often, we open them and there arent even any spots and the banana isbstill firm. We readily grab a couple bags of them and this is an important learning experience.

Here's why:

❤️ Food waste is a huge problem in our country. If people don't see PERFECT food at the store, it gets passed over and often left to rot. We use the experience to talk about food waste, the environment, etc.

❤️ It opens doors to talk about hunger. We talk about being thankful we have access to food and what others might experience.

❤️ Budgeting - 12 of these brown bananas cost us just $1.19. We talk about budgets and how purchasing food like this helps us stay within ours. Grocery budgeting was actually a huge reason we were able to begin homeschooling in the first place

❤️ Cooking and food prep. We will often buy 2-3 bags of these bananas at a time. Obviously our family of 3 can't eat that many before they go bad. So I teach how to use up our goods before they expire. This can be slicing and freezing them for our smoothies or a frozen treat (we love them dipped in chocolate), or to make things like banana bread or muffins.

This, to me, is the embodiment of homeschool. Not only is my child learning the basics like how to read and write, but we don't pass up any opportunity to learn - even if it's something as simple purchasing brown bananas. And I know that's going to set my child up to be a successful adult and human being.

#homeschool #alwayslearning #learnfromwhatsaroundyou #homeschoolmom #parenting #homelearning #lifeskills #naturallearning