Adventures in Grocery Shopping

I'm going to miss our weekly CBIs to Smiths grocery store!  Since the school is within a mile of the grocery store, we are expected to walk. However with the high temperatures and the students' sensitivities to the sun and heat, we no longer can go.  We had a lot of fun finding recipes, making grocery lists, exploring the store's weekly ad, hunting for the items in the store, comparing prices, checking out, paying for the groceries, and then finally getting to cook on Fridays.  There is so much learning that can take place when going to a grocery store and after.  I think my favorite part was taking pictures (I took some and then showed a student how to also, he loved it!) of the various aisles, areas of the store, and signs.  We printed all the pictures and then used them as an activity in the classroom for matching and categorizing. Some of the other highlights of our trips over the last months were seeing grandparents of students shopping many times, having a student run through the aisles cause he didn't want to leave, walking around the whole store twice to look for milk, becoming familiar with the bathroom, knowing where chairs were to rest, getting weird looks for taking pictures, people walking away from us like we were a disease, and many more POSITIVE things (=  I can't wait to start all over again in September!!! 

Here is a list of some of the foods we prepared this year, we tried to use various appliances: ice cream, rainbow cupcakes, cornbread, smoothies, cereals, tacos, quesadillas, ham and cheese sandwiches, ice cream floats, mini-muffin pizzas, brownies, baked potatoes, cake pops, crock pot chili, grilled cheese, cookies, cinnamon rolls, muffins, jello, pudding, etc.

My plans for next year are to push for a healthier menu and attempt to put a cookbook together for each kid to take home at the end of the year...and all the chefs could sign it!!

And I'm looking for any ideas on how to store our pictures from the store, so they last longer and are quick and easy to set up.  I'm afraid an album would get torn up easily with those thin plastic pockets. I was thinking of just a box, but it would be nice if I could display them so kids could look through them also.