Module 3: We Love Our Food
We Love
Our Food
OBSERVE
Objective: to learn where the food we don't eat, our food waste, and our garbage from food packaging goes after we are done with our meal or snack
Vocabulary: food waste
Reading: Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth
Hands-on Activity: Compost Recycling Landfill Reuse
Earth Friends Lesson
Module 3: Lesson 3
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 our food comes from.
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
What parts of your lunch don't you eat? I wonder what happens to what you don't eat.
Main Lesson
We are learning about where our food comes from, and now it's time to learn about where what we don't eat goes. Sometimes we can't eat part of the food. Sometimes we don't finish our meal that we can eat. Sometimes our food comes in a box or bag we can't eat. And we have spoons and napkins we can't eat. We call a lot of this food waste, but all our waste doesn't have to go to the garbage.
COMPOST Some food waste goes to the compost bin to go back to the soil. This waste is something we use to feed the plants.
RECYLING Some food waste goes to the recycling center to be made into something new. A pop can becomes a new pop can!
LANDFILL Some food waste goes to the landfill where it doesn't ever go away. In a landfill, it can't become something new, and it can't go back into the soil to feed the plants.
REUSE Some things we don't eat we can reuse for something else. A yogurt jar can hold plant seeds. Or a cloth napkin can be washed and used again, just like our spoon.
sit & learn: 5 minutes
Compost Recycling Landfill Reuse
This activity will help the children sort (and possibly count) their food waste items, deepening their understanding of what “throw away” means.
Materials Needed: 6-10 different items considered food waste. Try to use the same items that would be left over from lunches if you can. (Examples: snack wrappers, apple cores, pouches, leftover foods, juice box, water bottles, plastic spoons, yogurt container)
We are going to look at each piece of food waste and decide where it can go.
Go through each item and have the children decide what pile the food waste will go to*. At the end, talk about what pile is the biggest and what pile is the smallest.
Compost (food scraps, uneaten food, paper, thin cardboard)
Recycling (aluminum, glass, cardboard, recyclable plastic)
Landfill (wrappers, wax-coated cardboard, unrecyclable plastic)
Reuse (containers, spoons, napkins)
*Children can be hands-on and separate the waste or a teacher can do the sorting. This can be a one-time learning activity or a way to end lunch a few days a week or one day or all days.
Closing Sentiment
We can pay attention to where our food waste goes. We can learn how to compost, recycle, and reuse so it doesn't go to a landfill.
move & engage: 10 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
Where does my food waste go?
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.
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 and that not all waste goes to one place.
Throughout the Week
Discuss: the foods that don't come in packaging and the foods that do. What is the difference? How do different foods taste? Where does the food waste go?
Hands-on: Continue to check on and care for the newly planted seeds. What do the seeds need? Sun, water, time?
Discover: Go outside and look at what plants are growing in the garden. What plants are not growing? What do plants look like when they are not giving us fruits and vegetables? What do the trees look like when it's not warm outside?
Reading: Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth
Vocabulary: farm, soil, food waste,
Good Choices
I can ask adults where my food waste goes.
I can work together with my Earth Friends to make sure food waste does not go to the landfill.
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.
food waste: Anything we do not eat after a meal or snack; anything we throw away is our food waste.
Families at Home
Discover: We talked about where our food comes from, and now we are talking about where our food waste goes. After a meal or snack, play the sorting game with your child. Take each item that is left over and decide if it will go to the recycling (anything you can recycle), the compost (anything that will biodegrade) or the landfill (anything you must throw away). What do you have the most of? What do you have the least of?
*You do not have to have a recycling bin or backyard compost or compost service to do this. The point is to help your child understand what types of waste we create and where waste can go. You can dispose of the waste after the activity.
Visit: your local recycling center. You will likely need a group of friends, but many facilities put on an informative tour to help children and adults learn how their area recycles. Another option for learning in your household (if you haven't yet) is to download a regional recycling or waste management app on your phone.
Create: your own growing experiment with your child. Remember the seeds you discovered last week? Using items you have around the house for containers, plant 3-5 seeds. It can be an avocado pit from the guacamole to the acorn your child found on the ground to tomato seeds. Find a sunny windowsill, set up your little pots, and over the next month or so, see what grows and what does not. Not everything will germinate and turn into a plant, and that is part of nature.