(Cheerful piano music begins)
♪ You are the best you, the world will see ♪
♪ Come along now and share you with me ♪
♪ Let's learn something new ♪
♪ And share feelings too ♪
♪ 'cause these are the things to do ♪
♪ To be the best you ♪
(bright music)
(cheery music continues)
- Hello friends, hello Possum.
- Hello Auntie Lena.
Um, you've gotten dirt smudges on your face,
what you doing?
- Oh, well I'm planting carrot seeds in my garden.
I put compost around the seeds
to help the vegetables grow.
- Compost?
Isn't that something people make in kitchens?
- Yes, they do.
Compost is a mixture of vegetable rinds,
fruit peels and other food scraps.
Rather than throwing them in the trash,
we collect them in a bin in the kitchen.
- So composting is like recycling,
turning food scraps into something else?
- Yes, and then the rind
and the peels are tossed together in another bin,
and break down through dehydration.
- Uh, dehydration?
- Yes, to dehydrate means
to dry something up.
- Oh.
- The dried up peels look a lot like dirt.
Those peels get mixed with hay
and left over poop from our farm friends,
like chickens and cows.
- Th-there's poop in compost?
- Yep.
It's full of nutrients,
and can help things grow in the ground.
- We learned about poop in school.
- You did?
- Mm-hmm.
It's good to do it every day,
but we have to wash our paws after
'cause poop has germs
that can make us sick.
- And that's why farmers
wear thick rubber gloves,
and use big tools to mix the compost
to help keep them safe from the germs.
Then farmers add compost to the soil
to help seeds grow.
- So our food comes from seeds that start in the ground,
and grow into fruit,
and the scraps from the fruit go back to the ground.
- Yes.
Composting is a never ending cycle.
It's kind of cool.
It helps food scraps to make even more food.
- So composting is another way
to help Mother Earth.
- Right.
My friend Chef Isaiah wrote a story
about all the steps,
and all the people that take our food
from the dirt in the garden
to the table,
and back to the dirt.
The story is called "Up With A Scoop."
- A story all about food?
Can we read it?
- You know we can.
Let's go to the garden
as Chef Isaiah reads his book,
"Up With A Scoop,"
Illustrated by Mai S. Kemble.
- [Both] Hi friends.
- Hey, I'm Chef Isaiah.
- And I'm Flannery.
- Today we're gonna read "Up With A Scoop."
It's a really cool book I wrote,
it was illustrated by Mai Kemble,
and it talks about our whole food system.
All right.
Starting the day beneath a big blue sky,
a farmer gets to work,
and let's out a sigh.
When the cows poop goes up with a scoop,
and is placed on a pile beside the chicken coop.
From the pile to the pasture
to feed the new crop, the new soil makes sure
the field is tip top.
Then late in the spring,
seeds sown in a row,
potatoes need lots of space,
and room to grow.
The plants grow tall
in a nutrient-dense land.
What do you see here?
- [Flannery] I see bugs.
- Bugs are really important to plants' growth.
Each one of these plants
is like a different stage of the potato.
Here it's not quite up,
then gets a little higher.
And you can tell the potatoes are done
when the stalks are nice and big.
When bugs are on our food we know they're good
'cause they wouldn't eat anything that's poisonous.
Pull them out of the ground
with a strong and steady hand.
The fresh spuds, another name for potato,
are put in a big white tub,
and they're given a rinse and a scrub.
The work on the farm is finally done,
and these taters' journey,
another word for potato,
has only begun.
A big yellow truck with a big white cooler
comes to the farm to take out the tubers,
another word for potato.
So many farms and so many stops,
the season's abundant with so many crops.
Now packed full of veggies,
the truck heads out with the best food in town
without a doubt.
Do you have a favorite fruit or vegetable?
- My favorite vegetable are carrots,
and my favorite fruit is melon.
- How do you like to eat your carrots?
- I like my carrots in soup.
- Ooh, soup.
Do you ever like 'em crunchy with ranch?
- Um, I've never tried them.
- What?
Okay.
From beets to berries to beans and sprouts,
the truck is unloaded in a big warehouse.
Before the sun rises, with just a little luck,
the veggies head to town
in a big red truck.
Once in town it unloads its hall,
bringing goods from farms both big and small.
Some veggies here, some fruits over there.
One shopper wants to only buy local.
They're cooking up taters for a neighborhood social.
Yes, they're grabbing some taters there.
- I see lots of vegetables and fruit.
I see carrots, blueberries, potatoes.
- This lady, look, their child was grabbing a melon there.
- Looks like watermelon.
- You like watermelon?
- Yeah.
- From the shelf to the cart
and into the car,
they arrive at the kitchen where they'll be the star.
Do you and your family like to cook together?
- Yeah.
- What's your favorite thing to cook?
- Pasta.
So many possibilities.
Mashed, roasted or fried,
or sliced quite thin,
the scraps and skins are then placed in a bin.
This bin here, what do you think is in there?
- Vegetable skins maybe.
- What do you think they're gonna do with those?
- Put it in the compost.
- All right.
Awesome.
When the compost bin is full,
it's taken outside and picked up from the house
to go for a ride.
(upbeat music)
It's off to a place that will break it all down,
turning scraps into something familiar and brown.
Now nutrient dense, still warm and quite earthy,
it's packed on a brown truck for another journey.
This area look familiar?
- It's a farm.
- Yeah.
Back to a farm and unloaded scoop by scoop,
and then placed on a pile beside the chicken coop.
The really cool part is
the book ends favorite where it started.
Then everything scoop by scoop
is placed in a pile by the chicken coop.
Starts the whole process all over again.
What would you say is your favorite part of the book?
- Um, I'm not sure, what was yours?
- That's a good question.
So, out of everything I'd probably say the illustrations.
The story's great,
but I love showing how people are involved
in every step of the process
to get food from the farm to our stomachs
and back to the farm.
It's awesome.
- Thank you for reading this book with me.
- Oh, you're most welcome.
Any time.
Well, let's say goodbye to our friends.
- [Both] Bye friends.
(magical chime)
- Wow, it takes a lot of people
to get food from the dirt
to the table
and then back to the dirt.
- Yes, it sure does.
- Auntie Lena, um, didn't you say
that your friend who wrote the story is a chef?
- Yes, Possum, I did.
But, I'm stopping by my friend Chef Emme's for a visit.
- Oh, well do you think Chef Emme
can make us something to eat with your carrots?
- Well, Possum, my carrots aren't ready
to eat just yet.
We'll have to wait 70 to 80 days
for them to be ripe.
- 70 to 80 days?
Oh, I don't wanna wait that long for a snack.
- Well, I'm sure Chef Emme can show us
how to make a fun snack
in just a few minutes.
- Phew, 'cause I'm hungry now.
- Oh, and after our snack we can take our friends
to the garden to learn how to plant carrots.
- Oh, awesome, I love playing in the dirt.
- I know you do, Possum.
But first, let's make our snack.
(magical chime)
- [Both] Hi friends.
- I'm Chef Emme,
and I'm in the kitchen with-
- Harper.
- Harper, do you know what we're making today?
- Cucumber bites.
- These are super quick
and simple to make.
We're first gonna start out by peeling the cucumbers.
We're not gonna peel it all,
we're just kind of gonna peel it like this,
and then give it a little bit of space,
and then do another peel.
Do you know why we possibly do it like this
versus peeling it all?
- Why?
- Any guesses?
So a lot of the nutrients
is in the skin of the cucumber,
so we definitely wanna keep some of it
in there still.
It's a really pretty pattern, don't you think?
- Mm-hmm.
- And then what do you think
we're gonna do with the cucumber peels
that we're not gonna be using?
- Uh, compost?
- That's right.
So I have my little compost bucket over here.
I'm just gonna pop it in here.
Now we're ready to slice our cucumbers.
I'm gonna slice it in half,
and then you can have one half,
and I'll have the other.
Does that sound like a plan?
- Yeah.
- All right, perfect.
I'll show you exactly how to cut it.
We're gonna cut it like this.
We wanna make sure we keep our fingers
away from the knife.
We want it this thick.
- Yeah.
- A nice crunch.
So since it's a grated knife,
we're gonna go back and forth like a saw.
There you go.
Yeah.
Nice.
What's your favorite veggie?
- Hmm, there are so many.
- I know, they're all so good.
Cucumbers is one of my favorite.
I love that it's nice and crispy.
When you eat it it's a nice crunch to it.
- Oh yeah.
- Yeah.
There you go,
and then just one more.
There you go.
You are an expert.
- Cut. - And then these little ends,
we're going to?
- Compost them?
- Perfect.
And then we're gonna line up our cucumber slices
on this beautiful little platter that I have, like that.
will you do that for me?
- Mm-hmm. - Perfect.
So, we have our cucumber,
and then do you know what's gonna go in them?
We have a nice little filling
that we are going to be mixing together
and piping onto our cucumbers.
So, for our filling,
do you know what we have?
Do you wanna go through the ingredients with me?
- Mm-hmm.
- Perfect.
We have sour cream.
- Cream cheese. - Parsley.
And?
- Tomatoes. - And then our seasoning
we're gonna have?
- Garlic.
- And salt.
We're just gonna mix these together
so we have two tablespoons of sour cream.
One big, there you go.
And then we have our four ounces of cream cheese.
We'll do the same thing.
Put it in there.
- There we go.
- All right, a fourth tablespoon
of granulated garlic powder,
and salt.
And then we have our parsley that we grew
in our community garden,
and we're gonna cut about two tablespoons of that,
and add it to our mixture.
There you go.
Just chop it away.
Just like that.
What's your favorite herb?
- Hmm, what's an herb?
- It's kind of like this parsley.
There's also dill, there's cilantro.
Just gives your food a little bit more flavor
and seasoning.
- I think I know what cilantro is.
- Yeah?
You like it? - Mm-hmm.
- Okay, we'll add into our sour cream and cream cheese,
and then we're ready to mix it.
You wanna go ahead and do the honors?
- Mm-hmm. - Perfect.
(metal scrapes)
Beautiful job.
This is the funnest part of this recipe, in my opinion.
We are going to put this in a Zip-Loc bag,
and pipe it into our cucumbers.
- Decorate.
- Decoration time.
It can get a little messy too.
That's kind of also why it's fun. (laughs)
There you go.
Harper, I feel like you've cooked before in a kitchen,
you seem like an expert to me.
- Yeah.
- What's your favorite thing to make?
- Hmm, I really like banana bread.
- (gasps) I love banana bread.
You know how to make banana bread from scratch?
- Mm-hmm.
- Oh my goodness.
Will you make me some one day?
- Yeah.
- You gotta put it all into one quarter,
kind of like a piping bag.
You know, when you're decorating a cupcake
or something like that.
- Yeah.
- And then I'm gonna cut the corner for you,
and then you get to do all the fun part.
We're gonna pipe it onto each cucumber.
(cheery music)
There you go.
We are gonna top it off with some chopped tomatoes,
but this is kind of where you can get creative,
and you can use other veggies.
Do you have any suggestions of other veggies
that we might be able to top off our cucumber with?
I was thinking maybe some shredded carrots.
- Oh yeah.
- That would be pretty with the orange, right?
- Yeah.
- Or other herbs,
like the cilantro we were just talking about,
that would be nice.
- And- - Ta-da.
- Done. - Nice.
And then you wanna top off our cucumbers
with our garnish, which is the tomatoes.
- Definitely.
- Then we're gonna be able to eat it.
Super fun and simple, right?
- Mm-hmm.
- Ta-da.
Yay, they look beautiful.
Let's see if they taste as delicious as they look.
What do you think Harper?
What do you taste?
- Well the cucumber, it's real crunchy.
- That's my favorite part too.
And then the cream cheese
and sour cream is nice and creamy, right?
- Yeah.
- Ooh, do you taste the parsley in there?
- Oh yeah.
Thank you, Chef Emme, for cooking with me.
- You're so welcome, Harper.
And now let's join Farmer Ray,
who's planting some carrots.
- [Both] Bye friends.
- [Both] Hi friends.
- Thank you, Chef Emme and Harper.
I'm Farmer Ray,
and I'd like to introduce my friend-
- Rumi.
- Today we're gonna be doing some planting.
What are we planting today?
- Today we're planting carrots
and we're also planting lettuce.
- Yeah, this is gonna be great.
Well, you know, when you plant plants,
what do plants need so they can grow?
- Sun, air, healthy soil and water.
- Okay.
And I think we have a lot of that here, right?
So let's get started.
We've got some healthy soil here.
Let's start with the carrots.
- Okay.
- Okay?
So I'll get you the seeds.
And what's one thing we wanna add to the healthy soil?
- Um, compost?
- Yeah.
Maybe you wanna grab some of that,
and spread it right along that little row.
Okay.
That's great.
Now we're gonna put,
I'm gonna put some in my row here too, just like that.
This is good.
Okay, well let's take a look at those little carrot seeds.
- Oh, those are small.
- They are small, aren't they?
So put out your hand.
I'm just gonna give you a few at a time, okay?
You do your row, I'll do mine.
What I just do is-
- Sprinkle 'em all over? - Just sprinkle 'em along.
Try to get them a little bit distanced apart.
They're so small.
Oh, that's great.
We wanna scrape a little bit
of that soil over the seeds,
to cover 'em up.
Okay, that's great.
And then we're gonna add a little bit of water, okay?
- Okay.
- I'll just pour the water like this.
There, we pour the water.
So now the seeds have soil,
and they have water.
And then we just have to wait for them to germinate,
and then start growing some carrots.
- Okay.
- I'm very excited about that.
Yeah.
Next we're gonna plant some lettuce.
- Uh-huh.
- This time we actually had some lettuce.
Yeah.
We had-
- Lettuce starks.
Look at 'em all.
So someone else planted those,
and then they were given to us.
So I'm gonna go ahead,
and show you how to actually
get starks into the ground.
You've done this before.
- Yeah, I know how to do. - You can certainly help.
I press a little into the back of this pot.
- Oh, that's- - Look at all the-
- That's way more roots than I remember.
- Look at all the roots.
Yeah, well they've been in a pot for a long time.
So we're just gonna break these up a little bit,
and so they're the individual plants.
Okay.
And here's an example of a plant
with the plants and the roots.
So I'll dig a hole,
And you can put it in.
Okay.
And there's a nice little plant for you.
You can plant that plant.
- Plant that plant.
- Press it in a little bit.
That's great.
And then we wanna cover the roots.
- The further you press it in,
the more stable it is.
- Mm-hmm.
And I suppose we wanna have some of that
good fertilizer in there too.
Put some of that compost right in the hole there.
Put a little more in there.
That's wonderful.
That compost will really help the plant grow.
And then we're gonna cover it with soil,
press it down.
And plants need sun and good soil.
- The sun is just coming out.
- And water. - That's gonna be good.
- So, Ruby, I hear you have a little garden.
- Yeah.
- What do you like to plant?
- I've planted four things so far,
carrots, broccoli, peas,
which aren't doing too well,
and lettuce.
- Oh, that's great.
That's great.
Which one of those is your favorite to eat?
- Uh, probably carrots.
- Well, when you eat carrots,
do you eat the whole carrot?
- Uh, I eat all of it except for the leaves.
- Except for the leaves?
And what do you do with the carrot leaves?
- Uh, I give them to my pig.
- Oh, you give them to your pig.
- Yeah.
- You know what?
I don't have a pig,
so what I do with my carrot leaves
is actually I put them in a compost.
I mix them with other vegetables
and things that I can't eat,
and then that turns into really good soil,
and then I put that compost back in my garden.
- Thank you for showing me how to plant and compost today,
Farmer Ray.
- Well, thank you, Rumi for helping out.
And let's say goodbye to our friends.
- [Both] Bye friends.
- [Possum] It's time for Movement Minute.
(spring boings)
- Hi friends, my name is Coach Catherine.
Welcome to today's Movement Minute.
Today I will be showing you guys
how to do jump twists.
So step one for jump twists is to stand up nice and tall,
shoulders are relaxed.
Step two is to start jumping straight up and down.
Step three, hands up,
and then start to twist left to right,
and you're going to start to jump
as high as you can go.
And you are twisting your upper body,
as well as your lower body.
And you can twist and jump at the same time
on your tippy toes.
As you lift up, turn side to side,
and slowly bring it down.
All right, there you have it.
Thank you so much for joining us for today's
Movement Minute.
Bye, see you later friends.
- Oh, playing in the dirt,
and learning how to grow food was so much fun.
- It sure was.
And when they were cooking,
did you see how our friends
put the vegetable scraps
into the little bin on the counter?
- Yep.
Oh, it's cool to recycle food scraps
instead of throwing them away.
But, um, where do the scraps from the little bin go again?
- Well, outside of my house,
I have a big gray yard waste can.
I toss my little bin into it.
Then the compost truck picks it up.
- To go to the place where it's mixed with poop and hay?
- Yes.
Then it's bagged up for us to use in our gardens.
- Story time, snacks
and a trip to the garden?
I'm having the best day.
- Me too.
It was interesting to learn how we can use peels
and vegetable scraps to make compost.
- And the compost helps plants
to grow to be big and healthy.
Composting, recycling, reusing,
and reducing water use.
These are the things we promise to do
when we took the Earth Steward
and Water Protective Pledge.
Do you remember that, Possum?
- Oh, I do,
and, um, oh, hold on,
it think I still have it around here somewhere.
- Oh, oh, here it is.
- There it is.
Oh, Auntie Lena,
thanks for helping us to remember
to take care of the Earth.
- You're welcome, Possum.
And, friends, thank you for taking the time
to Look, Listen and Learn with us today.
Remember, you're the best you
that the world will ever see.
- Bye for now.
(cheery music)
- Today's story, "Up With A Scoop,"
written by Seattle Chef, Isaiah Ruffin,
is a fun way to share with early learners
where our food comes from.
The story also builds on ways to reduce, reuse
and recycle food scraps by introducing composting.
As Chef Isaiah says,
the story offers a small window into our food system.
It looks at the many hands
our food passes through before we enjoy it.
Stories such as this help children
build social awareness, social responsibility,
and social engagement.
These social emotional lessons
teach compassion to oneself,
as well as others.
And curiosity about where things come from,
and how things work,
and creativity.
In what unique ways can I help?
And the answer is we can all help reduce waste
by exploring how that waste can be reused,
reduced or recycled to enhance our environment.
(cheery music)