Plum Assignment Gets Students Into A Real Jam

Third-graders at Progress Elementary School will always remember their first batch of plum jam.

On the steamy, hot first day of school last week, 50 students wielded plastic knives, each dissecting a large plum. First, they halved the fruit. Then, they pried the pits loose. Then, they chopped and chopped.

Containers and bowls sat on the tables, ready to be heaped full.

“I’m sure you can’t wait to taste it,” said Paige Laws, one of three teachers involved.

“Oh, no thank you!” cried one boy.

“You’re slicing that like apples,” offered Christopher Greene to a classmate. “Do you want some help with that?”

That morning, the third-graders read the book “A True Story: Plum Jam.” In the story, a batch of plum jam seems to produce endless amounts of the sticky stuff - enough to patch the ceiling, even. The afternoon’s exercise gave teachers a chance to work in fractions - the recipe called for 5-3/4 cups of plums - vocabulary words, cooperation and listening skills.

“Does anyone know what ‘pectin’ does - that word that a lot of us don’t know?” asked Jeff Wallingford, another third-grade teacher.

“It thickens,” answered student Tanner Woolf, succinctly.

Teacher’s aide Veda Bergam, dubbed “the queen of plum jam”, by teacher Paige Laws, measured and stirred, and did the really sticky part of the job: the actual cooking.

Each child got a baby jar half full of jam to take home, along with a copy of the recipe.

Several children have helped their grandmothers make jam before, but this was the first time they’d done it on their own. The project is part of a start-of-school theme linking plum jam, friendship bread and homemade quilts to the Spokane Interstate Fair. The third-graders will go to the fair themselves on Monday and see how their jam fared in the judging.

“We have a lot of plum jam this year,” said Sharon Naccarato, one of the teachers who has made this project a tradition at Progress. “We really will be able to stick things together with it.”

A real congressman

U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt left a buzz of excitment in his wake as he toured the new Liberty Lake Elementary School last week.

“Coo-ol!” volunteered a third-grader in Chris Berard’s classroom. A mini civics lesson ensued.

“Does he help the president make the rules?” asked one student. Berard decided that was a good way to summarize the congressman’s role.

“I wish I could touch him,” confided one boy.

“Does he get paid a lot of money?” a girl asked.

“He gets paid about the same amount of money as our dads do,” Berard said.

“Does he live in the White House?”

No, he lives in Spokane, came the answer. Which elicited another round of oohs and aahs.

Child development screening

West Valley School District offers free screening of children to age 5 for potential physical development problems, speech and language development, concept development and vision and hearing.

The screening runs from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Friday at the Millwood School, 8818 E. Grace.