Where Does Our Food Come From?

How to Explore Where Foods Come From With Your Students

Since you can’t always visit a farm, why not get creative? Throughout the school year, you can use snack time, for example, to talk about foods and where they come from (How is it grown? How is it made?).  You can have the children participate in food-related educational activities every so often to help enhance discussions around food. Here are some activity ideas for you:

• Ask your students about some of the foods in their lunches or snacks. Do they know how the bell peppers they have as veggie sticks are grown? Do they know how the yogurt they eat is made? Do they have a vegetable garden at home or have they ever gone fruit picking?
•  Have students give an oral presentation or do a skit about a food-related trade (e.g., baker, dairy farmer, apple grower, cheese maker).
• Grow herbs in the classroom.
• Create a mural of a garden where various fruits and vegetables grow or of a dairy farm with cows in the field.
• Organize a tasting of various grain products so students can discover which grains they are made from (e.g., whole-wheat crispbread, rice cakes, corn flakes, rye bread, oat flakes).
• Hold a science fair about cooking and food processing (e.g., making bread, cheese, and yogurt).
• Ask students to make an ad about their favourite meal and the ingredients that go into making it.

Some Cooking Activity Ideas

If you are interested in cooking in the classroom with your students, you could make simple recipes such as bread, ice milk, yogurt, hummus, smoothies with fruit and milk and overnight oats.  For further learning, have a classroom discussion about all the different ingredients that were used and where they come from.

One thing to remember: when you introduce new or different foods, it is important to do it in a positive way so that students can enjoy making all kinds of discoveries!