MMMmmmm Mangos

Today, I had trouble accepting that my expectations were high. I mean to ask students to weigh Taste, Smell, Sight, and Feel and rank 5 different mangos when I think about it, makes me laugh. I thought I would be able to sit back with a clipboard and write down students' quotes but quickly realized that some needed assistance moving around the round table, accessing the slippery fruit in a healthy way, and managing turn taking. Some threw their voting chips into a bucket without trying all of the mangos, so the vote could very well be inaccurate. But since this is Kindergarten, we used the opportunity to graph our vote and am happy to announce that the Haden mango (from Florida) was declared best mango (first photo). My recommendation is to try an unripened Haden. Tart and less of a mess.

But here's the thing with today that I (we) could stand to remember. We need to manage our expectations. Things rarely go the way we had it planned and it's the ability to deal with or recover from these moments that builds resiliency. At 37, your children are helping me practice this daily. Today, after we graphed the mangos, students began to conduct surveys throughout the class. That was their self-directed follow up activity that I could have NEVER planned for. It came out of what appeared to be nowhere, but if we believe that everything is something, then we can trust that our kids are going to access our developmental curriculum naturally, sometimes randomly, and when they are ready. All we have to do is provide the mangos. :)