Module 3: We Love Our Food
We Love
Our Food
LOVE
Objective: to hold space for the children to form an opinion on how everyone on Earth is connected through what we eat
Vocabulary: (recap) farm, soil, food waste, insect
Reading: Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth
Movement Activity: We’re All Connected
Earth Friends Lesson
Module 3: Lesson 5
Begin Lesson
move: 5 minutes
Farm Fish Factory
This will be a repeat activity at the beginning of each lesson in Module 3 to help them build an understanding of the different places where we get what we eat.
Ask each child to choose a food they want to give us.
What food do you you have for us today?
Once a child has chosen a food, you can continue…
I wonder if you will need to grow a plant, raise an animal, catch a creature, or make it in a factory to get your food. Will you be a plant farmer? An animal farmer? A fisherman? Or work in a factory?
As the children choose how to get their food*, you have the option to continuing exploring the foods or you can create 4 groups: animal farmers, plant farmers, humans who fish, and humans who make food in a factory. Once every child has a group,, talk about where the foods from different groups come from.
We will get strawberries, potatoes, and grapes from our plant farmers.
Our animal farmers will raise chickens, pigs, and goats for us to eat.
This factory makes cake pops, Doritos, and candy.
I will fish for shrimp.
*Depending on the age of the children, you can prompt them with a food. "Who wants to raise cows? Grow apples? Make us lollipops? Catch fish?"Are you going to grow it, raise it, catch it, or make it in a factory?
Curious Question
Who eats plants? I wonder what plants eat.
Allow any answer. There is no expectation here. Children may answer that plants don't even eat! Do they?
Main Lesson
We are all connected to our Earth Friends through what we eat. We grow plants on farms. Plants need soil and insects to stay healthy. Some insects help make new plants and others decompose our food waste.
sit & discover: 10 minutes
We’re All Connected
Materials Needed: A ball of string or yarn; select animal friends (such as the list below) and 3 plant figurines to represent a local food web in your environment
Owl
Racoon
Snake
Frog
Bat
Fish
3 plants
Spider
Butterfly
Have the children sit in a circle. Hand out an Animal or Plant Friend to each child.
We are going to learn about what all our Earth Friends eat. Everyone set their Earth Friend down in front of them, and when I hand you the string, make sure you hold tight. Don't let go.
To begin, give the ball of string to the child with a plant. Who eats plants? Next pass the ball to an animal that eats plants (a rabbit) and then along to what eats that animal (an owl), all the while asking Who eats… ? If you run into the top of the food chain (an owl) then you ask, What else does that owl eat? (a bat) or run into the bottom, then you ask What else eats plants? (a butterfly)
You, the teacher, are the human. Keep the game going until everyone is holding one part of the string. You might have a pass around that looks like this: Plant > Butterfly › Frog > Snake > Owl › Racoon › Fish › Plant >Cow › Human > Fish > Owl > Bird › Ant › Plant > Bat › Snake. Once you have a complex web-some children will have 2 strings to hold-you can say, Close your eyes, but hold on to your string! Once eyes are closed, tug on the string. Okay, open your eyes. Say "me!" if you felt your string move when your eyes were closed. (Everyone will feel a tug.)
Did you know we are all connected by what we eat? Even if you don't eat plants or you don't eat insects, we all need each other to have healthy food.
Every Earth Friend felt the tug! We all need each other!
If the web is still intact, go back the way the web was built, talking about who eats what. Once the string is wound back up, ask the children to put their Earth Friends in the middle of the circle to collect.
Closing Sentiment
We are all living together on Earth, and we can all be friends and help each other have healthy food to eat. We can take care of our land, water, and air and make sure we know where our food waste goes.
Next, we're going to learn about where our energy comes from and all the ways we can create power to live, play, and travel!
move & discover: 8 minutes
place
based
You can draw attention to foods that are native to your area. What do the locals fish, farm, raise? Do you have any food factories in town?
End Lesson
Teachers in the Classroom
Teacher Activity
What Plants Eat
This experiment will take place over a week or two.
Materials Needed: 2 of the same fast-growing, easy-care plant; sunlit window, opaque box
Place 2 of the same type of plant in 2 pots. Set both pots by a sunlit window. Cover 1 pot with an opaque box. Water both plants each day and observe which plant grows and what color the leaves are when they grow.
I wonder what plants need to grow. What do plants eat?
Throughout the Week
Discuss: the 2 plants growing at the windowsill. How are the 2 plants different? What do plants need to grow?
Explore: After a snack or lunch, take anything that remains and have the children sort the food waste into: compost, recycling, landfill, or reuse. If there is a recycling bin, make sure the recycling pile goes there. If there is a compost, make sure the compost pile is dumped in. If there is garbage, make sure it gets put in the garbage can. If things can be reused, make a pile of what to wash up for next time. See what pile is the biggest. What pile is the smallest?
*This is not about reducing waste. The objective here is for the children to learn where their food waste goes.
Create: a food web. Have each of the children draw different animals, insects, and plants. Take the pictures and the ball of string and sit in a circle to make a food web. There is a chance it's harder to make a complete web, based off of the Earth Friends the children choose, but the objective is to continue to be curious about what all our Earth Friends eat and how we are all connected.
Reading: Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth
Vocabulary: (recap) farm, soil, food waste, insect
Good Choices
I can be kind to all my Earth Friends, big and small.
I can learn what different kinds of food different animals need.
I can help keep the land, water, and air clean so we can all have healthy food.
Vocabulary:
farm: Humans grow plants for food or raise animals for food on a piece of land called a farm.
soil: The top layer of the land on Earth where plants grow is called soil. Healthy soil grows healthy plants.
insect: Insects are our Earth Friends like Soil Friends that help plants grow from underground (decomposers) and Flying Friends (pollinators) that help plants grow above ground.
Families at Home
Discuss: What fruits, flowers, or vegetables your child is growing for the garden at school. How are your seeds doing at home?
Explore: This week we talked about food webs, who eats what. When you see plants and animals out in nature or in your yard, you can talk about what they eat-and possibly what eats them. You can also search for "food web" images on the internet and you will find various examples. We decided that plants eat sunlight.
Discover: what happens to plants that don't get sunlight. Materials Needed: 2 of the same fast-growing, easy-care plant; a sunlit window, an opaque box This experiment will take place over a week or two. Place 2 of the same type of plant in 2 pots. Set both pots by a sunlit window. Cover 1 pot with an opaque box. Water both plants each day and observe which plant grows and what color the leaves are if they grow. What is the difference? What do plants need to grow? What do plants eat?