FIELD TRIP: Top Distributing

We really enjoyed our walk to visit Mr. Kuipers (a.k.a. the 'Banana Man') at Top Distributing. Yes, you read that correctly - we walked there! We've become really great walkers over the past few weeks, and seeing that Top Distributing is in our community, we decided to walk there together instead of taking a bus!


Top Distributing is a banana distributor. That means they buy bananas from different countries in Central America and bring them to grocery stores so that we can buy them. Bananas are not grown in America, which means that they all need to be shipped from far away countries which do grow them. Mr. Kuipers shared with us all kinds of cool facts about bananas and showed us different kinds of bananas that we never knew existed!

DID YOU KNOW...
...that bananas are America's number one fruit?
...Americans consume over 25 pounds of bananas per person per year?


Here's a truck load of bananas that came in while we were visiting and needed to be unloaded:


What is the first thing that needs to be done once the bananas arrive?
Watch the video to find out:




After they arrive, they get placed into storage rooms to ripen. We were able to experience what it would be like to be a banana. Watch our adventure into a storage room with LOTS of bananas! We didn't last very long due to the smell!

Do you remember the name of the gas that bananas release as they ripen (ripen means to change color from green to yellow)? Listen closely and you'll hear Abby tell you in the video!


As you can see we sure had a great time learning about bananas!!

Thanks for taking your time and teaching us Mr. Kuipers!
Our students had so much fun that many of them want to work at Top Distributing some day!