Objectives/Assessment Targets

Students will:

• Name the main nutrients of select fruits and vegetables.
• Identify that eating a variety of foods make up a healthy meal.

Activity Preparation

This lesson may be used throughout the year to test students on content retention. You can adapt these activities to be garden or nutrition heavy, based on what you are interested in testing. Checking in with students on content retention periodically may help you get a better understanding of what they learned and what they need to learn more about.

This is an activity that can be scaled up for 4th or 5th grade, as well as a rainy day activity inside the classroom.

Materials

• Fruit and Veggie Mania cards
• Variety of fruits and veggies for tastings
• Worksheet, Fruit and Veggie Mania: Veggie Quiz, page 3 in student workbooks

Activity 1: Fruit and Veggie Mania

Divide students into groups of two to four. Distribute a set of the Fruit and Veggie Mania cards and instructions to each group. These can be found in student workbooks, Veggie Quiz, on page 3. Direct students that they are going to play a game that will help them review:

1. The main nutrients of several fruits and vegetables.
2. How these fruits and vegetables grow strong in the garden.
3. Edible parts of the plant.

When the game is over, ask the players what they learned about fruits and vegetables they would like to try, have tried, or are willing to try. Challenge them to try to eat at least one fruit and one vegetable from the card game that week.

Students pair-share or group share:

1. Name a fruit or vegetable high in vitamin A? Vitamin C? Fiber?
2. Name two fruits that they eat most of and their plant parts.
3. Name two vegetables and their plant parts.

Student Reflection

What are your favorite vegetables to eat? What are your favorite plants that you planted this year? Which of these vegetables have you eaten before and which were new? Did you enjoy them?

English Language Learning (ELL) Focus: Superlatives and Past Tense

• My favorite veggie that I ate this year was ____________.

Additional Information

You can make more fruit and veggie mania cards to cover as many fruits and veggies as you like by drawing or finding pictures and pasting a brief description of the plants’ nutritional value on the back. Flashcards are excellent to use as a base. Laminate these for years of use.

^{The content found in this demo chapter has been adapted from Berkeley Public Schools’ Gardening and Cooking Program via www.oercommons.org.}