Pomegranates

I can thank one of my students from this past year for introducing me to this:

It was storytime & snack and I was in the middle of reading a book to my students when I noticed that one of my girls was eating something I had never seen before.  So after I finished the story and we transitioned to the next activity on our schedule, I asked her about it and she happily filled me in about pomegranates.  That weekend I bought one at the grocery store and my daughter and I had messy fun trying to get all the deliciously juicy little seeds out! 

That was March.  It's now almost July and we have not been able to find pomegranates in Anchorage ever since!  So I gave up trying to find them again...until last week when I spotted one out of the corner of my eye at Target (of all places) in my hometown in Minnesota.  I was SO excited about my find and even more excited to open it up and extract the seeds!  The inside of a pomegranate is so COOL and my daughter and I have so much messy fun digging in!

 I bought yet another one this week and was determined to find a way to get those seeds out with a lot LESS mess.  I had heard something on NPR about Martha Stewart having a neat and tidy way of doing it, so I looked it up on Youtube and watched a quick video.  Her way is SO simple!

1) Slightly score the skin in quarters and pull it apart into 4 separate pieces.

2) Take a piece and put it in your palm, seed side DOWN.

3) Take a wooden or metal spoon and hit it over and over in your hand.  

4) The ruby red seeds fall like raindrops into your hand and you simply put them into a container or your mouth!

 

What does this have to do with teaching? 
I thought this could be a fun team building activity at the start of the year.  The first day I would give teams a pomegranate, butter knife and wooden spoon and ask them to extract as many seeds as possible, being as neat as they can.  I would take pictures and we'd look at them up on the SmartBoard and discuss what each team did and how they worked together. 

The next day I would teach them the Martha Stewart method and then we would talk about the pomegranate (history, nutrition) and that could lead me into a "healthy morning snack" talk.

Did you know that 1 pomegranate has as much potassium as 10 bananas?  I'm a runner who just did a half marathon and I'd rather eat a pomegranate before running, to avoid leg cramps, than 10 bananas!

  Now I'm hungry!