Aims
- To provide cross-curricular links with nutrition.
- To practise pair interaction with a short dialogue
- Some of these activities encourage support at home which will help the parents to become involved in the English their child is learning. In turn the children themselves should see that what they are learning can have a real impact on their lives outside of the classroom.
Materials
- Paper and card for making own books
- Cut up copies of dialogue sentences
- Cooking clipart as vocabulary flashcards
- Access to computers for scavenger hunt
- Storybooks (if possible)
Role play
This can be a model for a short dialogue. Cut up into strips of paper and in pairs the children can reorganize the dialogue into the correct order.
Greengrocer: Good morning. Can I help you?
Customer: Good morning. Yes, please. I would like two bananas, five oranges and three apples, please.
Greengrocer: Anything else?
Customer: No, thank you.
Greengrocer: Two pounds, please.
Customer: Here you are.
Greengrocer: Thank you, goodbye.
Customer: Goodbye.
Storybooks
Here are some of my favourite storybooks that are related to food.
Eat Your Peas by Kes Gray and Nick Sharratt – Confronts the issue of fussy eaters. It transpires that Daisy’s Mum is as fussy as her daughter. She will offer absolutely anything (including one hundred chocolate factories and a couple of space rockets) so that Daisy will eat her peas. The story culminates when Daisy points out that her mum hasn’t eaten her Brussels sprouts. You can use this book to lead the topic of what you do and don’t like to eat.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle – A classic story of the hungry caterpillar who every day eats a little bit more until one day he turns into a beautiful butterfly.
Max’s Breakfast by Rosemary Wells – Also looks at fussy eaters as Max’s sister Ruby tries to convince her brother to eat his egg. She ends up eating it herself.
Ketchup on your Cornflakes by Nick Sharratt – A split-page book which allows all sorts of food combinations such as ice-cream on your hat or custard on your chips. Children love making their own versions and you could enforce a fruit or vegetable rule whereby every combination must include a fruit or vegetable.
Make your own books
Here is a book which you can copy and print for free. The language is simple e.g. ‘I like bananas’, and so accessible to younger primary learners.
http://www.dltk-kids.com/nutrition/fruit-book.htm
There are sequencing cards to accompany this book that you can copy and print so that the children can practise their listening skills and process what they have understood by putting the sequencing cards into the correct order.
http://www.dltk-kids.com/nutrition/fruit-sequencing.htm
Fruit and vegetable alphabet scavenger hunt
The Enchanted Learning website has a fruit and vegetable scavenger hunt quiz:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/classroom/K1/fruitvegquiz.shtml
You can print the questions out and give a copy to each child. They can work in small groups depending on how many computers you have at your disposal and the size of your class. You might like to reduce the number of questions to make it more manageable and to focus on some of the more common fruit and vegetables.
Use the online picture dictionary at the Little Explorers section of Enchanted Learning (http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Dictionary.html) where they can click onto the first letter of the word and then use the pictures to help them find the fruit or vegetable. They can also check their answers with the writing underneath each picture.
Five a day
There has been a move in recent years to encourage people to eat more healthily. It is highly recommended that we eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. There are a lot of educational resources on the internet that can help you to make this a very interactive subject. The link below is to a website that has lots of activities for kids:
http://www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org/get-kids-to-eat-fruits-and-vegetables