Have you ever noticed that kids love foods that look like things they recognize like animals, bugs, toys, people, etc.? It is fun to create cute snacks that kids like and that are safe and healthy for them too! For…
Snacks for Kids Cookbook Project
Category: Nutrition
Quesadillas: A Nutrient Dense Mixed Food Lesson & Lab
When teaching about the food groups in MyPlate I find it’s also important to explain the concepts of mixed foods, empty calories and nutrient dense foods. Junior high students are often confused as to what these terms actually mean. After…
Decision Making Lesson & Group Activity
For years I struggled with how to teach decision making more interactively. I wanted students to know and understand the process and be able to apply it to important decisions in their lives, but I also wanted an activity where students…
Energy Bar Comparison
With the plethora of sports enhancing food items available, how does one know what to choose? Student athletes often use performance enhancing food products and often don’t know what they are really eating. This lesson helps students think critically about what performance enhancing products contain and their true nutritional value.
Breakfast: The Most Important Meal of the Day!
If we’ve heard it once we’ve heard it a thousand times…BREAKFAST is the most important meal of the day! Eating a healthy breakfast benefits us in many ways such as providing nutrients and energy, maintaining weight, boosting metabolism, and helping…
Promoting Whole Foods
When it comes to my food, I like to keep it REAL! Growing up real foods came from the garden and fruit trees we grew, harvested and preserved. Real muffins, cookies, and desserts were made from the eggs we gathered daily from our backyard chickens and real meats came from the wild game my father hunted and fished for. Home cooked meals were prepared by my mother and were made with real foods with ingredients I actually knew and could pronounce. Sadly, the majority of my students don’t know what it means to eat real. All they know is the pre-packaged, easy to make foods known as processed. This lesson explains the differences between the whole, real foods I know and the processed foods they know and hopefully gives them “food for thought” when it comes to making REAL changes in their eating habits.
Time to Feed the Baby: Homemade or Store Bought?
New parents are faced with a lot of new experiences and decisions that need to be made. Upon birth a new parent must decide whether or not to breast feed or bottle feed. Then when the infant reaches approximately…
Spaghetti Squash: Best Kept Secret
Looking for a guilt free, low calorie, alternative to pasta that will surprise your taste-buds? Look no more! Spaghetti squash is one of those best kept secrets that needs to be shared! Not only is it easy to prepare, but versatile too. So what are you waiting for? Swap out that pasta for spaghetti squash and encourage your students and their families to try experiment and try something NEW.
Assessments in a Bag
This idea came about because I was looking for an alternate way to assess my students about their knowledge of a particular unit or topic besides administering a test. Instead, I developed a partner or small group interactive, cooperative based…
Fast Food Commercials & Nutrition
This lesson compels students to analyze fast food marketing practices specifically the marketing efforts aimed at children and teenagers. Using Neilsen commercial data, students answer a variety of questions and draw their own conclusions.