#24 - Vegetables

[Marie]

Lesson #24 Vegetables

[Tuesday]

Author: Tuesday
Date: 7/21/2001

We went to the farm exhibit at the zoo. We saw Jersey cows and holstein cows, and other dairy cows. We missed the milking demonstration. This means we will have to go back. We saw the horse, a bee hive, chickens hatching, roosters, goats. The farm exhibition explores getting farm products to market and nutrition. It is a fascinating exhibit.

We took a paddle boat down the lake and rubbed elbows with mallard ducks and Canada Geese. My son could see the duck's feet paddle as they swam. I reached over and plucked a feather from the water. We saw a gull dive from the air for a fish and mallards with bottoms up searching for food.

There was also an exhibit on gardening. The exhibit demonstrated how to organize small patches of spaces within a large garden. We saw a butterfly garden habitat with weeping willows bending in majestic splendor. Under the shade of the trees, flamingos and swans sunned themselves and their babies.

The Lincoln Park Zoo is a real treasure. It is on the north side of Chicago with Lake Michigan on its north border, a conservatory on its south border, and an urban park zoo for your walking pleasure. The landscape is serene yet filled with excitement and wild animals. I identified many different nature habitats today. This peaceful haven in the midst of urban commerce offered excitement and motivation for various units within MFWK.

Enjoying God's creation in My Father's World.

Tuesday

[pruegert]

This gardening technique is very simple to do with kids, and it can be very beautiful:

http://www.squarefootgardening.com

This lesson is also a wonderful opportunity to teach about healthy eating since many Americans don't get near enough vegetables. Check out this site for some information with a Biblical perspective:

http://www.hacres.com

[Winkie]

Some extra books we enjoyed with this unit:
From the Garden by Michael Dahl (a counting book)
The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin
Vegetables in the Garden by Pascale de Bourgoing

[sweetlucyhope]

We made tiny flashcards of lots of different foods. I made copies from one of the teaher idea books I have but this would be very easy to do from scratch, letting the child draw the foods.

The following website was terrific:
http://www.mypyramid.gov/kids/index.html

I printed the colored food pyramid:
http://teamnutrition.usda.gov/Resources/mpk_poster.pdf

We discussed that and empasized where vegetables fell on it.

I printed the black and white copy for her to color and label as well:
http://teamnutrition.usda.gov/resources/mpk_coloring.pdf

Then, we took the matching color of construction paper and labeled each one according to its color on the pyramid. We then sorted the food cards onto its matching food group page. GREAT activity. She especially loved coloring her favorite foods on the cards.

Blessings,
Lesa
Mom to 6 yo Trinity and 2 yo Will
MFW Kind. - 2 units left!

[RachelT]

More books about vegetables that we enjoyed during this unit:

The Vegetable Group by Mari C. Schuh (talks about the food pyramid).

From the Garden, A Counting Book About Growing Food by Michael Dahl (the number is hidden on each page, my kids loved hunting for them).
Rabbit Food by Susanna Gretz and No More Vegetables! by Nicole Rubel are both good for picky eaters.

Food for Thought, The Complete Book of Concepts for Growing Minds by Saxton Freymann is a fascinating book where the illustrations are photos of real fruits and vegetables that are sculpted or put together to look like people, animals, etc. Really different!

Growing Vegetable Soup and Eating the Alphabet are both by Lois Ehlert.

I cannot believe we have only two more units left for our first year of Kindergarten!!

[Poohbee]

Thanks for the info. about the food pyramid, Lesa! For some reason, it didn't even dawn on me to learn about that during this unit, but after I read your post, we incorporated it. My daugther really enjoyed it, and now whenever she wants a piece of bread, she asks if she can have her grains. :-) Also, after working with the food pyramid, we noticed that there are food pyramids on some of the packages of the foods we eat, such as our bread bag.

So, thanks for posting the links!

[Mom2MnS]

Here are a few favorite books from our vegetable study:

Blue Potatoes, Orange Tomatoes by Rosalind Creasy
Mrs Spitzer's Garden by Edith Pattou
Oliver's Vegetables by Vivian French
How Groundhog's Garden Grew Lynne Cherry **

** we highly recommend this one! The art is beautifully detailed and the information is excellent - it's also a fun story :)

[martinmcash]

We found a book called Wiggle and Waggle about a pair of worms and their life in a garden. It's great! We also planted a garden filled with all different types of veggies (even a pumpkin patch!) This was a very fun unit for us.

[Kirsty]

We read "Vegetable Soup" by Jeanne Modesitt, which is a great story.

Then we made a comparison chart, and compared the vegetables from Vegetable Soup and Peter Rabbit.

We did something similar for Stone Soup- because there are many versions of the same story, but with different ingredients.

[psalm126mama]

Mister Rogers on Amazon Streaming

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood 1984, Ep. 1539 "Episode 9"
Mister Rogers visits a factory where people make vegetable soup. In Make-Believe, Daniel's soup can grew into a plant - but with Bob Dog's secret help. Even though Bob Dog's admission will disappoint Daniel, it's good to know the truth.

[spunkytigrr]

I agree it's a good unit to introduce a food pyramid. I wanted to give a handy resource though...

In recent years I've come across the "Healthy Eating Pyramid" and "Healthy Eating Plate" which is put out by Harvard as a preferable alternative to the USDA's old food pyramid and My Plate. Basically they say that the USDA's pyramid/plate has some problems and was created by people who had a business interest in its message ... so Harvard had their own faculty come up with an alternative pyramid/plate based on the latest science and not by business interests.

If this is of interest to anyone, you can click here for more info:
Food Pyramids and Plates: What Should You Really Eat? ~from Harvard Medical's Nutrition Source~
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/pyramid-full-story/

[bethinga]

Here's a kid's version of the Harvard food pyramid, plus some fun activities, under the "For Families" tab.

http://kidsgrowingstrong.org/EatHealthy

And more books:

Tops and Bottoms, by Janet Stevens
The Vegetables We Eat, by Gail Gibbons
From Seed to Plant, by Gail Gibbons
One Bean, by Anne Rockwell
Up, Down, and Around, by Katherine Ayres

[bethinga]

http://www.teachpreschool.org/2011/09/p ... ol-window/

We used this fun idea for watching a bean sprout grow! The clear plastic bags made it so easy to see what was happening, and in a sunny window, made a nice "green house" for our beans. The kids are enjoying checking on them! (We did this activity after reading the book, One Bean, which I listed above.)