Mrs. Vienneau named 'Super Lunch Hero'!

Special assembly honoring Mrs. Vienneau

On May 9th, representatives from the MA School Nutrition Association surprised our Kitchen Manager, Mrs. Linda Vienneau, at  a school-wide assembly.  She is the first school nutrition employee to be recognized as "Super Lunch Hero of Massachusetts" for outstanding food service.  For more details about her nomination, view postings on this blog labeled 'kitchen' or the Daily News article:  A Show of Love.

Linda Vienneau (center)
Principal, Mary Beth Shea; Food Service Director, Bonnie Kitsakos; and
Child Nutrition Association Representatives, Janice Watt & Jane McLucas

Our Super Lunch Hero

Posters drawn by Ms. V-No
to advertise daily specials.

To kick off "Child Nutrition Employee Week", which begins May 6th, the MA School Nutrition Association is holding an essay contest to find a "Super Lunch Hero."  

Take a peek at the next few blog posts to discover why I am nominating the Sweetsir School Kitchen Manger, Linda Vienneau.  Her contagious sense of humor, tremendous enthusiasm, and dedication make her worthy of such an honor.  Ms. Vieneau (last name sounds like V-No) always has a super clean kitchen and goes above & beyond to promote school lunch as a healthy choice for children.

Career Day
Student inspired by Ms. V-No

In addition to the post below, Ms. Vienneau has been featured in past blog entries.  Follow the kitchen label in right column to see pictures of a brownie troop tour and a video of Mrs. Vienneau making bread.  She is our Super Lunch Hero- Bon Appetite!

Fool's Fun

First grader with Linda Vienneau, our Kitchen Manger.

On April 1st, this first grader made a "Fool's Hat" for Ms. Vienneau, he said it was "to give her a taste of her own medicine."  Throughout the day, Ms. Vienneau had played a number of April Fool's Day pranks on students and faculty.  For example, she cut up the lunch order slips and glued them on to long pieces of paper.  In the morning, when students and teachers went to fill out the order forms they had a good chuckle.

Mrs. V-No has school spirit!

She decorated pumpkins as Ernie & Bert
to decorate the kitchen for fall.

Ms. Vienneau, our Kitchen Manager, has a knack for spreading school spirit!  Her enthusiasm is a perfect fit for prek-2 school.  She even spells her name tag phonetically as V-No.  Here are some examples of the many ways Ms. V-No adds fun to our school:

• Throughout the year, she decorates the kitchen for each season with her own hand-made creations, including gingerbread houses and specially decorated pumpkins.

With students on Book Character Day.

• She randomly surprises students with stickers for eating their vegetables and trying new dishes. 

• She created 'Lucky Lunch Day', to encourage students who might not normally buy a lunch to try school food.  (Students who participate are randomly chosen for prizes she purchased).

• If there is a surplus of a particular side item, she draws funny faces on them to entice students to choose it.  (A clever way to promote white milk over chocolate).

• She not only dresses up for school theme days, i.e., "Career Day" and "Book Character Day," she also creates her own theme days.  For example, on Cinco de Mayo you will find her wearing a sombrero and mustache.

Lucky Lunch Prizes

• On her own birthday, she dons a birthday crown and gives away special pencils.

• She is also a talented cake maker who creates special cakes for staff meetings and retirement parties.

• She participates in school events on weekends and evenings-even bringing along her grown daughter to share a PTO Breakfast with Santa.

Cake she created for staff members
.

• Ms. V-No is always ready with age appropriate jokes. "What do you say if someone tries to take your cheese?....Nacho-cheese."  (Told while serving nachos).

Spending a Saturday morning with
 her daughter at a PTO event.

Posters she created to advertise
lunch menu.

Brownies in the Kitchen

Mrs. Linda Vienneau, Kitchen Manager and former girl scout, gave Brownie Troop 63140 a special behind the scenes tour of the Sweetsir kitchen. The girls wore hair nets and gloves while discussing healthy food choices. They said their favorite things to see were the jumbo cooking utensils and funny looking potatoes Mrs. Vienneau had set aside to show them.

Why is there a 'blob' in the kitchen?

Watch this video to find out what is on the counter and why 

Chef Vienneau was wishing for 'smelly-vision.'

We have two fabulous women working in the Sweetsir School kitchen!!  Mrs. Chase and Mrs. Vienneau keep a super clean kitchen, are kind to children and take pride in making foods from scratch.  Take a look at this video and you will see why students love to buy hot lunch at Sweetsir!

Mrs. Vienneau became our Kitchen Manager this year after transferring from the Page School.  One of the reasons she wanted to come to Merrimac was to work in an early childhood setting.  She loves young children and has made the cafeteria a warm and inviting place.  She often surprises children with stickers for eating their vegetables or trying new foods.  She raffles off prizes for 'Lucky Lunch Day', decorates pumpkins as sesame street characters and even wore a crown on her birthday and gave away pencils.  It has been fun to have her as a member of our school.