Nutrition

Last Monday I started my first unit! I decided to do my unit on nutrition because it's around that time of the year and also because one of my roommates is in the nutrition program (so I have plenty of resources).  Nutrition has really turned out to be fun, but most things are in first grade :D.
We started out with K-W-L anchor charts:

I also made other anchor charts to enhance their learning, and to make nutrition more visual. This is what they looked like at the beginning of the week:

I introduced the new nutrition guide (MyPlate) and we talked about one food group each day of last week. When we talked about how much of each food group was necessary(with a powerpoint), we added an amount of that group that would fulfill our everyday requirement. After we learned about each food group, we ended the lesson by filling out our nutrition packets and then "adding a scale to the dragon". This consisted of drawing and labeling a scale-shaped piece of paper with a food item that would fit in the food group of the day. Now, our anchor charts look like this:

 On the fruits day of our unit, we made observations in our nutrition packets about two bananas and how they looked outside and then inside. Since the insides were the same, we talked about how bananas can get bruises but can still be healthy inside and compared the banana's peel to human skin.

In addition to our lessons on fruits and vegetables, we did a lesson about colorful fruits and vegetables and what they do for your body:

Every day we talked about different nutrients and what they do for your body (in kid terms), as these nutrients were mentioned when talking about each food group. I thought it was great to get them acquainted with these terms, and they really like to use them!

Today was the 100th day of school, but we tried to weave in nutrition a little bit by having the kids generate sentences about nutrition. We wrote all of the sentences on the board so that no one had the same one, and then they typed and printed all of their sentences during computer lab. These sentences will form a class nutrition book.

That's it so far!