This is the perfect time of year for a unit on the food pyramid. Between Thanksgiving and all of the holidays in December we are all faced with endless choices of food. That’s why I like to do the food pyramid unit during this time- it helps students stop and think about the different foods they are eating and how it will impact our bodies.
During this unit we work on identifying foods for each food group. Most of the kiddos in my class are very picky eaters and don’t always eat across the different food groups. We make a big classroom chart with lists of food for each group. This is what my chart looks like before:
Then we go through and fill in as many foods as we can think of. Next, we use food picture cards to help us come up with more foods to add to our chart. Here is what it looks like when we are done:
You could easily add pictures to the chart if you have non-readers. The group I did this with were all able to read. When we did it as a whole class we switched to adding pictures to the food pyramid so everyone could use it as a reference chart. Sadly I forgot to take a picture.
Here are the pictures cards we use to help us fill in the chart. We also separated the cards different ways. In this picture we has sorted the cards into food groups.
We also sort them by healthy versus junk food, sometimes foods versus frequent foods, like versus dislike. The possibilities are endless!
During this unit we also talk about how important it is to move your body. I add motor activities into academic activities whenever I can. You can read about how I integrate math and movement HERE.
A fun activity to do with this unit is to have a taste test. Try to use foods that many of your students aren’t familiar with or eat. Only one of my students had ever had kiwi…guess what we tried?!
If you do the taste test you can graph or tally the results.
You can find the materials used in these pictures and more by clicking HERE.
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