The Garden Chef: Cooking Through the Food Groups is a 62-page nutrition and cookbook download subtitled “A collection of recipes and activities for the elementary classroom.” Sponsored by Virginia’s Agriculture in the Classroom program, the activities incorporate core skills while covering the five major food groups:
- Grains.
- Vegetables.
- Fruits.
- Milk.
- Meat and beans.
Let’s see what’s inside.
First, we start with a one-page introduction that explains how the food group is produced and marketed. This description is specific to Virginia, but would largely apply to any area. One easy modification would be to see how that food group is produced and marketed in your own state.
Next are several recipes featuring the food group. These are not your typical kid-type recipes! For vegetables, for example, the recipes include:
- Sweet potato fries.
- Easy egg rolls.
- Fresh tomato salsa.
- Garden vegetable wraps.
- Corn and zucchini medley.
- Pizza fries.
- Potato pancakes with cinnamon apples.
Finally, three lessons investigate the properties of each food group. The lessons cover health, art, math, science, reading, music, English, and history.
By the time you have finished you’ll have covered:
- Refined and unrefined grains.
- Nutrients.
- Fiber.
- Bread production.
- The food pyramid.
- Bar graphs.
- The six parts of a plant.
- The edible parts of a plant.
- Buoyancy.
- Milk production.
- The benefits of protein.
- Creating a balanced meal.
- Equivalent fractions.
- Comparing foods eaten by the Pilgrims to those we eat on Thanksgiving.
Oh, and made some really cool ice cream!
A food pyramid printable is in the back.
The Garden Chef is an easy and fun way to cover health and nutrition. And it’s free!
Additional Resources
Fruits & Veggies: A Unit Study
The Garden Chef makes a great addition to our fruits & veggies unit which also covers food pyramid history.
Free Nature Studies: Our Daily Bread (Wheat)
More on bread — from seed to production.
10 Ways to Use Notebooking: #7 Science
Suggestions and forms for documenting the experiments.
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