On Thursdays we have been meeting downtown at the Iowa City Library.  Today, Sara Steele read big books with the tater tots while the bigs played bananagrams word game.  Marta, our Spanish teacher, discussed Spanish speaking countries using an Atlas.  She also introduced a website http://cvc.cervantes.es/ensenanza/mimundo/default.htm.  After, we checked out books and headed out to school.
We celebrated Claire's birthday (Aug. 8th) by making a cake.  Then Claire left the room and the rest of us decorated for her party.  The look on her face was priceless! (check out video below)
The students decided to compliment the cake with chocolate mint milkshakes made with the mint from our garden.  They got to decide how much ice cream, milk and mint to add to their own creations.

Today we started tasting things from our garden !  Four beds were planted in June and were named for the items grown inside.  "Salsa" included garlic, tomatoes, cilantro, onions & hot peppers, "herbs" contained lavender, mint & basil, and "veggies" included tomatoes and bell peppers.  The final garden was dedicated to strawberries. Off to the side blueberries, raspberries, pumpkin and squash were planted.

On our 2nd day of school, we took some of the items from our garden to make a vegetarian pizza for lunch!  We thought we might add some peppers, but after tasting them we decided they were a bit too hot!  We all had to eat chips and fruit to remove the sting from our mouth.  However, we did use our basil to make our own pesto  (See recipe below).  Laura brought in some pizza dough and we got down to work.  The kids took turns spreading the dough on our olive oil lined pan.  We tried to get it thin and fill in the holes.  Afterwards, we spread the crust with our homemade pesto, basil leaves, fresh tomatoes (from Paula's garden because ours are still green!), red pizza sauce, mozzarella and parmesan cheese!  We also used our tomatoes to make some caprese:  tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and a basil leaf.  Check our the photos below to see our creations!