Food and Learning....What?

On a tidal wave of recent research I have completed related to kinesthetic learning, I began thinking about how kinesthetic based activities in my own high school classroom could transcend to a variety of classes.  As a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher, I primarily teach Foods I classes at the high school level.  My class obviously revolves around food, but in recent curriculum changes and new teacher evaluation standards, I have become more and more increasingly aware of how many subject areas are intertwined into my class; making my approach to teaching more global.  I began to wonder, how can parts of my curriculum be used in other subject areas to meet the needs of both the curriculum and overall education of students?  How can foods based activities be utilized to enhance kinesthetic learning in the classroom to not only engage learners, but to increase concept attainment as well?  I decided to break my emphasis down into the core subject areas:

• Math
• Science
• English/Language Arts
• Social Studies

The Foods I curriculum focuses on integrating the aforementioned core areas daily.  Below are some ideas and links that I use and that may be effective for fellow educators to use in their own subject areas:

• Math
• Use food and recipes to teach fractions, geometry, and measurement
• Give students a recipe with vague measurements and ask them to complete it.  This can easily teach how important precise measurement is.  There are many easy no-bake recipes that are inexpensive and don't require a kitchen! 

• Science 
• Cooking with Science has a lot of great ideas from yeast to eggs!
• Teach chemical reactions using leavening agents!
• Blow up plastic baggies!
• Yeast balloons!
• Teach about bacteria and viruses through food safety and sanitation.

• English/Language Arts
• Use recipes to increase literacy awareness
• I use high interest articles about food and its effects to do an array of literacy based activities like 3-2-1, Fast/Quick Writes, Annotation, etc. 

• Social Studies
• I use Country Reports, which our county has a license to use, to research food preparation in different countries

• Other useful resources

• UEN has lots of useful lesson plans for ALL subject areas!
• Fight Bac has useful food safety and sanitation info!
• Food Master has many lessons for using food in science and math!

These links can be used as a springboard to get educators involved with using food in their classrooms.  I know that some teachers may already use food in their lessons and that is great!  But if you aren't, there are many inexpensive ways to integrate it in your classroom.  

Stay tuned for my next blog, Nutrition in the 21st Century: Using Technology to Teach Lifetime Nutrition.