Fruit Salad Assembly Line

The end of October brought a flurry of activity in our classroom. Much of our homeroom time was spent planning, preparing, and implementing our contribution for the school-wide Eco-Feast. We called it Fruit Salad Assembly Line.

Concept sketch. (It gets cooler...)

The idea is this: We would provide a healthy, delicious, perfectly-portioned fruit salad to every individual who wanted one at the Summers-Knoll Eco-Feast.

Accomplishing this required a lot of discussion in light of what we learned while studying Farm to Table. For example, how important was it to us to use organic food? What about using local food? Did we want to use fruits that were out of season in our area, but had been shipped from another part of the world? Of course, cost was also an important factor: If we made the most ethical choice for each item, would we still be able to afford the project?

Even the store we obtained our supplies from became an issue. After considering our options and taking a vote, we packed up and drove to Whole Foods, which we decided was the store most likely to have the largest selection of organic produce.

Comparison shopping at Whole Foods

When we arrived, many of our noble notions went out the window. Fruit is expensive, especially fruit that has been certified organic. As we maneuvered around the produce section, many items were debated, priced, placed in our cart, debated further, removed from the cart, and so on. Blueberries were $4.99 per box, so we scaled them back to only three containers. Blackberries and bananas were less expensive, so we padded our salad with those. We started out with five bags of organic apples that were $2.69 a pound, then we weighed them to see what the total price would be. When we got over the sticker shock, we downgraded and downsized to three bags of a less expensive (but still organic) type of apple. By the end, we felt pretty good about the balance we were able to strike between commerce and conscience.

The Summers-Knoll fridge, stuffed to the gills with our future salad.

 On Monday afternoon, we began the prep work, which involved a lot of washing and cutting:

Our fruit-cutting guide.

At the end of a productive afternoon, we washed dishes, and began engineering our conveyor belt.

A work in progress...

On the day of the feast, we put the final touches on our conveyor belt system, divvied up jobs, and did a test run of our assembly line.
 

The test batch came out well!

Once we had the kinks worked out, we joined the rest of the school for the feast. After everyone had a chance to go through the bountiful buffet line, we invited people to the middle school commons to check out our handiwork.

First, Noah places an empty plate on the belt for each "customer."

Next, the plate is pulled along the assembly line, and each student adds a different kind of fruit as it passes.

Finally, a perfectly portioned fruit salad is available at the end of the line!

The whole process was quite impressive. Check out our team in action:

It was really a sight to behold! Our class pulled together as a team, exercising a variety of skills throughout the process. They were proud of the results, including the rave reviews they received from students and teachers. It was a fun and unique way for us to contribute to our community feast!