Nutrition Lesson Plan

PROGRAM GOALS:
Increased awareness that humans need to eat right to be healthy. Improved knowledge about the four food groups and how to balance them in your daily meals. Improved eating habits, because students will learn that good nutrition helps their bodies grow strong.

THEME: Nutrition

INTRODUCTION OF ACTIVITY:
During circle time, start taking about the four food groups and their components. As a group talk about what the students had for breakfast and the difference between healthy food and party food (junk food). Explain to the students that foods have vitamins in them and they help make them grow. When they are seated at their desks, make a list of healthy foods for our bodies on the board. This would help evaluate how much students know about nutrition.

OBJECTIVES:
Identify the four food groups. (grain, fruit, vegetable, dairy and meat), and to be able to categorize them in the right group.
Explain how many servings you are suppose to have each day from each food group.
Describe to the students that some foods have more vitamins then others and some foods are better for your growing process than others.
Compare and contrast healthy foods to party foods (junk foods).

ACTIVITY TIME:
Art: Students will make their own menus. Each student will be aware of how many servings are needed from each food group for a balanced diet and from there they will cut out pictures from magazines of each food group that will be needed. The students will include breakfast, lunch, and dinner on their menus.
Math: Students will make-up prices for their menus and will be given a set amount of money that they can spend on meals. From this point students will have to use their math and reasoning skills to budget what they can afford. Then compare and contrast how much cheaper it would be to buy food and make at home. (i.e. have students bring in their parents receipts from grocery shopping and make some calculations).
Science: Conduct an experiment on how sugary foods can rot your teeth. Teacher will show this by taking a chicken bone and letting it soak in a sugary solution. The bone after awhile will become soft and rubbery. I would then have a discussion about sometimes it is all right to have foods like that but not a lot.
Cooking: Have students make a healthy treat of trail mix.
Story/Music/Movement: 1) Going on a picnic and everyone has to bring a healthy treat starting with the letter A then B.... 2) Fiction books, Stone Soup by Troll Associates illustrated by Diane Paterson, Everything Grows by Bruce McMillian and Lunch Bunnies by Kathryn Lasky.

EVALUATION: Evaluate the students at the end of the week by having them chart their own diet for a day and put each item that they ate in the right categories. (If they ate a bagel they would chart that in the grain group). The students will also have to eat the daily allowance of each. Then I would have them turn in their chart and a paper stating whether they ate healthy or not that day.