Burnett Creek third grader Lili Olvera had never tasted a pickle before—until Pickle Day in Hannah Dunbar’s class.

Thanks to a Lafayette Breakfast Optimist Club grant, students are exploring all sorts of nonfiction topics from magnets to squirrels and germs.

For Lili, Pickle Day started with a video tour of the Mt. Olive Pickle Factory. “It surprised me that they are technically cucumbers that are placed in a jar with the juice stuff and they turn into pickles,” she says.

Two students at a time approached the counter to sample four different kinds of pickles. Lili offered her reviews: “The gerkins tasted sweet, almost like it wasn’t a pickle. The bread and butter one was kind of sweet and tangy. The dill spear was sour and a little salty. The hamburger chips were very wet, juicy and very, very sour.”

Lili didn’t walk away a huge fan of pickles but says she might try the spear again sometime.

Later, students chose a pickle-themed topic to research such as how pickles got their name, the history of pickles, how to use pickles in recipes and different kinds of pickles. Some wrote essays about what they learned while others enjoyed reading stories like “The Rude Pickle,” “A Pickle in the Post” and “Stop That Pickle.”