Tamales for Haiti

At Puebla Christian School, the third and fourth grade class made and sold desserts in order to donate money to Haiti relief efforts. My students also wanted to help and suggested making desserts too. We decided, however, to take a field trip on Friday to my mother-in-law's house so that she could teach them how to make tamales. I asked the kids if they'd ever made tamales before, and not one of them had.
Our only snag was that the school suburban broke down over the weekend and still wasn't repaired by Friday. One parent volunteered to drive us, and I talked with other parents after school on Thursday to find one other driver. At the last minute, we had our transporation.

We arrived later than we had planned to, so the kids went right to work. There was plenty of veggie chopping, chili cleaning, onion peeling, and corn husk inspecting for all of them to do. They worked steadily until noon when finally the tamales were ready to cook. At that time the kids ate their lunches, and then they had a short language arts lesson.

Fortunately, the tamales cooked faster than we had thought they might, and they were done just when one parent returned to Six's house to take us to school. The kids spent the half-hour before school let out making posters to advertise their wares. Parents began buying immediately, and within 15 minutes, all 60 tamales were sold. The fifth and sixth grade class raised $51.14 to send to Haiti. On Monday they will vote on where to send the donation.