Category: Foods & Nutrition

Bizarre Mystery Food Project

On occasion I have shown episodes of Chopped in my classes.  My students and I are often amazed at the unusual foods that are selected for the challenges; many students have never heard of.  Knowing that these foods piqued my students’ interest, especially junior high, I decided to create an assignment around bizarre mystery foods that could be used as bell ringers, fillers for when class ends early or even as a before holiday or spring break activity to keep students engaged and interested! This assignment not only provides information on curious, bizarre foods, but also helps students navigate the world by showing where in the world these foods originate via Google Maps and helps build confidence during oral presentations as they WOW their peers with unique food curiosities!

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Food Labeling Claims

Do you know the difference between a health claim and a nutrition claim?  Most of my students don’t!  This lesson explores the difference between the two as well as why it is so important to understand what food labeling claims actually mean when reading a food label.  This lesson includes some informative and creative activities, incorporating the information learned so that others might be enlightened.

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#ShowMeYourOvernightOats

Oats are a staple most cooks cannot live without!  How many other whole grains pack as much healthful variety into their product?  The thing I love about oats is the fact that they can be customized in so many recipes from breakfast foods, baked goods, healthy snacks, and even used in place of bread crumbs when making things such as salmon patties or meatloaf!  I wanted my students to see, taste and appreciate the goodness that oats have to offer so when I saw a YouTube ad by Quaker Oats promoting an oats contest, I knew how I wanted to incorporate this information into my grain unit.  However, if you don’t teach a unit specifically about grains, no worries as this can easily be incorporated into a breakfast  or healthy snack unit!

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Halloween Wars

Want a fun, creative and competitive way to incorporate Halloween themes into your foods class?  Check out the project shared by Beth Beattie, a FCS teacher from Missouri who incorporates various parts of Halloween Wars into her Food Science class at Montgomery High School. It started as a way to showcase professions within the program and after viewing Halloween Wars, students decided they wanted to make it a competition!

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Styles for Handling Conflict: Lesson & Activities

Conflicts exist everywhere: at home, at school and at work!  No exemptions!  However, just as the problems vary so do the ways ways that people may deal with them. Check out the interactive lesson below on how you can teach your students all about the various styles for handling conflict in both their personal and professional lives.

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HANGRY: A Healthy Eating Talking Points Activity

Have you ever needed a short activity to fill time due to a “surprise” assembly, early dismissal or one class finishing before another?  This activity can be stretched or shortened depending on your needs!  Hangry is a real concept that most of us have experienced at one time or another and because of this, it can be a very relatable topic for students to talk about and make connections to. I’ve included some activities that work well with this topic, so, pick and choose or do them all!  

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Kids in the Kitchen with Children’s Book Inspired Recipes: A Literary Feast!

It does my heart good to see young children helping out in the kitchen!  Back in the olden days, children learned to help out in the kitchen and even cook and bake at a fairly early age.  Today’s children, not so much! One thing that I have noticed about my incoming 7th graders is that their culinary skills are severely lacking!  Sadly, many students aren’t allowed in the kitchen to cook or experiment with food preparation, others simply can’t be bothered because “convenience” is easier and has become a way of life. Lastly, many may want to learn, but have no role models in their lives that can or will teach them as their parents and even grandparents just don’t cook!  This lesson combines literacy and food prep as students learn the importance and benefits of why young children should be in the kitchen, helping to prepare foods with their parents. It also shows them how creating fun recipes can be an extension of the very books the children love to read.  So, take literacy and food prep to a whole new level and show students how they can enjoy a literary feast!

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Food Influences Intro Group Activity to Culminating Home Scavenger Hunt Portfolio Project

Why do you eat what you eat?  For some this is an easy question and for others it’s a bit more complex.  After all, there are many things that influence our food choices and they may be completely different from one person to the next!  When I teach about food influences in the junior high, it’s often one of my very first lessons with them.  This introductory group activity is a great way to get students up, moving around and communicating with you and their peers right away.  The middle of this lesson consists of an overview of the influences and application activity. Finally, the culminating project is a scavenger hunt portfolio that students complete outside of class and can be digitally or hand-generated but gets students sleuthing around their homes, looking for some of the influences as they relate to their own families.

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Student Led Mini-Lessons for Food PreparationTerms & Kitchen Tools

The trend in education is to create student led activities, projects and presentations! After being inspired by a literary term assignment that my son had to create and teach to his AP Literature class, I thought, why not do this with food preparation terms and kitchen tools, letting students compile the information in a presentation and teach each other the materials!  This easily became a template that I could share with my students via Google Classroom, keeping entire presentations together. Since students had to orally, present their term or tool, I could grade as they presented, making my life easier at the end of the day!  

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Healthy & Positive T-Shirt Messages

What I love about this assignment is that it can be adapted to almost any topic that you want students to walk away with messages promoting positive thoughts, actions, and attitudes!  I initially created this to use when teaching about healthy dating relationships and after using it thought of umpteen other lessons that I could use it with. So let me give you some background and suggestions for implementing this and then let your students have at it as they develop their own original slogans, messages and images about whatever topic you assign.  This is also a great template to use when running a design contest or for club t-shirts or fundraisers!

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