Nutrition Unit

This winter has been crazy!  Here in Northern Virginia we've had 14 snow days, plus a bunch of delays.  My poor unit plans have been so derailed, but I wanted to share with you the highlights from our study of the Food Groups and Nutrition.

To begin, we learned about the 5 food groups, plus "Treats."  We used a big basket of food from our play kitchen, and sorted it by the group.  I made these colorful posters as a reference for the kiddos.

Each day during circle time, we sang a song or played some other type of game.  This "Healthy Choices" song is to the tune of "Where is Thumbkin?"  Each student had 6 small pictures in front of them.  When we sang the verse, the student located the matching food group and held it up.  They loved this!  Any time they can sing, move, and participate, I know that they're learning.

During centers, we used counting cards to practice counting and number recognition to 16.  Lots of my students are still struggling to count and identify numbers higher than 10, so this is good practice for them.

We love making graphs.  This is a graph of favorite fruits. 

Here is a work mat that I made for the students to use at centers when they are sorting foods.  They can either sort pictures or plastic food props.

Some of my older (5-5 1/2) Pre-K students are ready to work on ABC order.  At this center, the students choose a food strip.  They have to figure out which letter is missing between the two letters that are pictured.  The foods on the cards match the letters, so there is a little initial sound practice thrown in there too!

One of our favorite Nutrition books is Gregory the Terrible Eater.  In this story by Mitchell Sharmat, Gregory the Goat likes to eat fruits and vegetables and other (by his parents' estimation) terrible foods.  His parents try to convince him that he should eat more like a goat-- shoelaces, cardboard boxes and old rubber tires.  The students think this is hysterical!

I also made these cute "Celebration Certificates" to give to each student at the end of the unit.  (Although we didn't even get to that because of all the snow closings!  When we were finally back in school, I was ready to move on to the new unit!)

All of the circle time songs and lessons, food group posters, plus tons of literacy, math, and writing centers are included in this new "Nutrition: Centers and Circle Time" unit.  Enjoy!