2. Food

Steps

  • WATCH – Cue up the video below and watch it with the class
  • DESIGN TIME – Give students time to reflect and design in their planning booklet
  • SHARE – Have students share their ideas with the class or work in their groups
  • GO DEEPER – Add an activity from the extension buffet below (optional)

 

 

Extension Buffet

  • DISCUSS  – What food grows locally? Do students have a garden at home or a family farm? Where can you find local food in your community? What local, seasonal foods do your students love?
  • ECOCHALLENGE – Challenge students to reduce their lunch waste by making their own with the BR Granola Bar EcoChallenge
  • JOURNAL – All food has a story. Have students write the story of how their favorite food is grown, harvested, transported, prepared, and eaten.
  • MOVIE – A family bans all grocery store food from their house in the movie – First We Eat.  The movie follows a family with 3 skeptical teenagers, living just 300 km from the Arctic Circle that puts food sovereignty to the test. (Movie Trailer 2:27). Learn where to watch the whole movie here
  • DISCUSS – What wild foods have your students tried? Berries, salmon, deer, morels? This is a great topic for your students who hunt and fish. How do these animals and plants rely on having clean water and wild spaces? 
  • INVESTIGATE – Have students become detectives and go into their cupboards to find where the food they eat comes from. Look up the countries on a map. Use the food miles calculator to calculate how far the food is from. Which food is closest? Which is from the farthest away?
  • FUTURE LUNCH – Design a school lunch for a child in your community of the future.  What kinds of local food will they eat? What kinds of ways will they have to compost and reuse? Will their lunch be zero waste? The students could have individual lunches packed at home or a shared lunch is prepared for all.
  • FIELD TRIP – Coordinate a visit to a nearby local farm, community garden, or other local food producers in your community
  • INDIGENOUS FOOD – Discuss what plants, animals Indigenous peoples of your area eat.  How are these foods fished, hunted, harvested, prepared and shared today?
  • GROW IT – Grow cut green onion roots in water on a windowsill.  Plant some beans and sunflower seeds in your classroom in pots and see how they grow. Farm to School BC has teacher resources for starting school Gardens.
  • WATCH – Why is Composting so Good for the Environment video (1:38)
  • COMPOST IT – Find a person or group in your community with an active red wigglers compost bin and ask them to bring a worm bin to the classroom. The bin could ‘visit’ for an hour, or perhaps the bin could stay longer so the students could feed it.
  • WATCH – Urban Farming on Hydroponic Rooftop Greenhouses in Quebec video (6:34)

 

3 responses to “2. Food”

  1. It seems my comments aren’t posting, so I will try again.

    Something I did with my class to further consider food was two fold. We went on a community walk to see if we could spot community gardens. We also has the children share how many had a garden or small farm and how they preserved the food they had. I am an avid gardener and preserve a lot of my vegetables either as frozen food or as canned perseveres, and I dry quite a bit of fruits and vet too! It was fun to bring in samples to show.

    In addition to this, we went to the local grocery store and did a “local food scavenger hunt”, as quite a bit of their meat, dairy and produce is from fairly close places. Our Local store is also part of the commercial compost program, and food recovery program which they were able to talk more about too.

  2. This section was really interesting to the students. We spent more time than I had expected because the students ran with it. Some of my students had previous knowledge of rooftop gardening so we spent some time talking about that and watched that Urban Farming in Quebec video. Their ideas were brilliant and they loved talking about them and sharing.

  3. Again, the Future Makers video is excellent. The follow up buffet offers additional content that enriches learning. I hoped to make the granola bars, but we ran out of time for this. I thought it would be fun to make reusable wax paper to complement this activity. I used some activities from the Beyond Recycling site to further learning with students. We did the story of your favorite food activity. Tell the story from the beginning until you eat it. This was quite surprising for many students.