816-L«nc«ster Farming, Saturday, April 8, 2000
Kid’s Got Spring Fever?
UNIVERSITY PARK, (CEN
TRE CO.) Jim Van Horn, family
life specialist in Penn State’s
College of Agricultural Sciences,
suggests some fun-and inexpen
sive-activities for children in
the springtime.
Ages 2-3
•Visit a farm. A lot of things
happen on farms in the spring.
Plan to show your child the field
work and animals, particularly
baby ones. Look at the farm
equipment.
•Watch the road repair
crew. Spring is a good time to
watch crews repair winter dam
age. Children love trucks, bull-
dozers and cement mixers. You
also might visit a construction
site.
•A “made-myself” salad.
Your child can design a salad
portrait using a peach half for
the body, a half of a hard-cooked
egg for the head, shredded
cheese for the hair, etc.
•Force leaves and flowers.
Put a branch that is just begin
ning to bud, such as forsythia,
pussy willow or a fruit tree, in
water. Pussy willows that root
can be planted outside.
•Act out nursery rhymes
and stories. One person can
recite a nursery rhyme while
another acts it out. An easy one
is “Jack Be Nimble.” Try acting
out a rhyme for your child to
guess. Good plays include “The
Three Bears” and “Three Billy
Goats Gruff.”
•Family stories. Tell your
children stories from early baby
hood. They also will love to hear
about what they did that day, or
things that have happened to
them or the rest of the family. If
they have stories to tell, write
them down and share them with
the others.
•Play dough. Mix one cup
flour, a half cup of salt, a half
cup of oil and enough water to
make dough. Add food coloring
to the water or two tablespoons
of dry tempera to the flour.
•Make Mother’s and
Father’s Day cards. It’s never
too soon to encourage your chil
dren to do special things for the
family. Write on the card the
messages they give you.
Ages 4-6
•Learn signs. If your chil
dren get lost, they will feel and
be safer if they recognize famil
iar signs. Point out signs as you
walk or drive. Talk about their
shapes and colors. Draw signs or
cut them from magazines and
paste them on paper to take
along.
•Grocery shop. Let your
children help make a store list.
They can gather nonbreakable
items that they know by the pic
tures, like cereal or crackers.
They can choose a vegetable,
fruit or bread. They also can
help put food on the checkout
counter and hand the cashier
any coupons.
•Make cottage cheese.
Heat one cup of milk to boiling,
add two tablespoons of lemon
juice and stir. Strain to separate
the curds and whey.
•Cheese tasting party. Use
different cheeses, such as moz
zarella, brick, cheddar and
Edam. Compare color, taste and
appearances: “Swiss cheese has
holes, cheddar is orange.”
•Animal babies. Watch of
calves, lambs, foals or chicks as
you drive. Visit a zoo. Look at a
book with pictures, such as
“Animal Babies.” Cut baby ani
mals from magazines and maKe
a scrapbook. You can print the
name of the animal on the page.
• Grow a garden in an
eggshell. Save washed
eggshells that have been broken
in half. Prick the bottoms with a
long needle. Stand them in an
egg carton (lined with foil or
cardboard). Add a little coarse
sand or pebbles to each shell,
than add soil to a half inch from
the top. Plant two or three seeds,
then place your garden in a
sunny window. Water daily.
When the weather warms, you
can plant the shell and all out
side.
•My very own place. It
may be only a drawer in a chest,
but all children should have a
private place to store their trea
sures. Make and decorate a box
together for special things.
Ages 7-8
•Plan a family night. Your
children will enjoy a turn plan
ning a family night with games
that they suggest. Ideas include
charades, a puppet show, danc
ing to records and reading sto
nes.
•’’Great Moments” family
scrapbook. Give each “great
moment” plenty of room for
expression. Great moments
might be the time you were
trapped during the “big bliz
zard,” or your child’s first day of
school. You might start the book
during a family vacation.
•Visit a jug farm dairy
store. Some farms process and
bottle milk. Check ahead to see
if and when you might tour the
barns, watch the cows get
milked and watch the milk being
bottled. Follow the process from
calf to heifer to milk cow to milk
ing to bottling, and - if possible
- the making of ice cream. An
ice cream treat might be a spe
cial ending.
•Visit the lumber yard or
hardware store. Explain the
various nuts and bolts. Watch a
key get made. If the store cuts
glass or planes wood, watch the
workers. Watch paint being
mixed and let your child take
home color samples. Look at the
tools and let your child help
decide which one to buy. At
home, your child can help use
the new tool or play with the
paint samples or other things
you got at the store.
•Tadpoles. Listen to a
marsh or pond in early spring. If
you hear frogs, walk gently into
the water with a jar and wading
boots. Frog eggs are found in
masses, like strings of pearl, or
floating clumps. Scoop them into
the jar with some pond plants.
Feed them a little corn meal
daily. Add water when needed.
Return them to the same pond
when they become large.
•Grow an American flag.
Design a flag garden in a sunny
area about 28 by 36 inches.
Draw the flag on dug-up earth
with sticks or clothespins and
string. Plant blue petunias for
the star area and red and white
petunias for the stripes. The
strings help keep colors separat
ed.
•Tie dye paper. Pour a half
cup of warm water into several
plastic containers. Add five or
more drops of food coloring. Fold
tissue paper or paper towels and
dip the corners into the dye.
Unfold the paper and let it dry.
Refold it another way and dip
into another color, etc.
Nose Separates ‘Ahhh ’ From ‘Ugghh ’
SAN FRANCISCO Dis
tinguishing the difference be
tween the aroma of pepperoni
pizza and boiling cabbage is not
as simple as it seems for every
one.
Some people have a height
ened sense of smell and can be
overwhelmed by aromas. And
some suffer from smell blind
ness, a condition appropriately
called “anosmia,” that could
make the cabbage smell like a
four-star restaurant.
But, who is who? In the com
mercial world, how do you dis
tinguish between those with
perfect sniff pitch and those
with none? Cornell University
food chemists are finding out by
standardizing the spectrum of
smell.
Jane Friedrich, Cornell docto
ral candidate in food chemistry,
is developing sniff standards in
the laboratory of Terry Acree, a
Cornell professor of food sci
ence, at the university’s New
York State Agricultural Experi
ment Station in Geneva, N.Y.
“Let’s say you smell an essence
oil like jasmine, which is a pure
smell. Your ability to smell that
jasmine is based on a small com
bination of olfactory receptor
proteins.
Those proteins produce a pat
tern your brain would recog
nize,” she says. But even for
finite aromas like jasmine,
people smell it in different ways.
One reason for the large vari
ation associated with olfactory
acuity is due to a phenomenon
called “specific anosmia,” said
Friedrich. Simply, this is smell
blindness, or insensitivity to the
odor of a chemical or group of
chemicals in people with other
wise normal olfactory sensitiv
ity. Specific anosmia poses a
challenge to researchers because
it can distort data in sensory re
search labs.
Friedrich noted a classic ex
ample of this sensory-test prob
lem from a study performed at
the Western Regional Research
Laboratory in Albany, Calif.,
more than 30 years ago. Test
subjects sniffed isobutyric acid,
which smells like dirty socks or
an unclean goat to most people.
But there were two testers who
sensed the isobutryic acid had a
“very pleasant fruity odor - like
apples.”
Experiments later revealed
that the wayward individuals
had a specific anosmia to isobu
tyric acid, and the fruity smell
they detected were the bypro
ducts and impurities usually
found in commercial samples of
the acid.
‘lf a company wants to make
pine cleaner for bathrooms and
inadvertently uses a person on
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the smell panel with an anosmic
sense of smell, that person may
barely perceive the alpha pinen
(the active chemical responsible
for the smell). This means that
the rest of the consumers will
think it smells too piney,” said
Friedrich. “That’s a problem.”
Using a selective and sensitive
bioassay for smells based on gas
chromatography olfactometry,
called Charm Analysis TM,
Friedrich and Acree have inves
tigated the compounds responsi
ble for specific anosmia. The
researchers now are attempting
to correlate sensitivity to the
chemicals to the olfactory recep
tor genetics. In short, people can
now be tested and categorized
for their valuable acumen by
Notes To Dad
Jan Scholl
Penn State R
Do you sometimes feel
overwhelmed by the kitchen and
the various tools and what they
are used for?
Wish you had some guide to
assemble a kitchen or, better,
put together a kitchen that takes
little storage space and that can
be moved, for example, to a
summer place or used in case of
evacuation?
The Portable Kitchen Assem
bly Guide can help you assemble
over 40 kitchen gadgets and put
them together in a small area in
your home or car. The items are
packed in dish pans, which
when unpacked can be used as a
make-shift sink.
Assembled, your portable
kitchen could include: an apron,
baking sheet, biscuit cutter,
bottle opener, bread knife, can
opener, chef knife, colander,
cooling rack, cutting board,
timer, detergent, dish cloth and
towels, dish pans, scrubbing
pad, dry ingredient scoop, egg
timer, foil and plastic wrap,
funnel, grater, hair cover, jar
opener, kitchen scissors, ladle,
loaf pan, potato masher, mea
suring cups and spoons, mixing
bowl, muffin tin, paper towels,
paring knife, pastry blender and
brush, pie server, place setting,
pot holders, potato peeler, roll
ing pin, scrapers, slotted spoon,
spatula, strainer or sieve, tongs,
trash bags, vegetable brush, wax
paper, wire whisk and wooden
spoons.
Your young children can
learn to identify kitchen tools
and what they are used for as
the bulletin contains pictures
and explanations.
This Cooperative Extension
guide can be purchased for $1
(shipping and handling) from
sniffing a broad, standard
aroma set - in a few whiffs. The
set will allow laboratories easily
to screen out individuals with
specific anosmia.
Friedrich used standard tests
to sort out her original testing
subjects. She screened 10 people,
with each testing period taking
about 3 weeks, or 30 weeks of
testing in total. Friedrich and
Acree believe that they can now
accurately place people in three
categories: hyperosmic (very
sensitive), hyposmic (the base
line category ) aim anuMinc.
“This will help other re
searchers conduct analyses,”
said Friedrich. “Our goal even
tually is to get the testing down
to three sniffs.”
the Publications Distribution
Center, Ag Administration
Building, University Park, PA
16801.
- Summer time is also a time to
step-up food safety practices.
Pay attention to how long you
leave food out on the table.
Cooked food should not go with
out refrigeration for longer than
two hours. So clear the table and
take care of food before clearing
the dirty dishes.
Wash hands often and care
fully. Your youngster can help
you by singing the alphabet song
while scrubbing carefully under
hands and nails. Help your child
develops this practice by making
sure he or she scrubs carefully
before eating meals and snacks.
Pay attention to cross
contamination issues: putting
cooked meat back on a dish that
contained the raw meat, turning
on the spigot with dirty hands
and turning off the same spigot
with clean hands, and using a
dirty meat knife or cutting
board to cut vegetables. These
are all hazardous practices and
ones that we don’t always think
about when it happens.
Also, really try to keep count
ers and work surfaces as clean as
possible. You don’t need to use
an antibacterial product, just
good old hot soap, water and a
little elbow grease followed by a
rinse. If you do use a cleaning
substance, make sure it is used
and put away right away so that
little hands don’t come in con
tact with them. Keep locks
latched on cleaning product
cupboards.
Using these tips and the port
able kitchen can help you as the
summer nears. It is good to be
prepared!
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