Cook, Bake and Learn

While focusing on the Ontario Health and Physical Education curriculum, make connections to food and nutrition across all curriculum strands.

Here are some examples...

Math

Practice patterning and counting by making fruit kabobs.
Learn about fractions using different measuring cups and spoons for dry and wet ingredients.
Explore student taste or meal preferences and display results on different types of charts and graphs.
Calculate fractions by measuring ingredients and calculate modifications to the recipe (e.g., how to double a recipe).
Using a sample budget, make a grocery list and cost out the ingredients for a recipe.
Reading a nutrition facts table and % daily values.
Calculate the mass of a bulk purchase order for the student nutrition program and the cost to purchase it.

Science

Learn about how to keep food safe and proper handwashing.
Make a recipe that celebrates seasonality of ingredients (e.g., maple syrup in spring, strawberries in early summer, winter squash in fall).
Learn about states of matter using water as an example (e.g., boiling, freezing).
Study a variety of food preservation techniques (e.g., fermenting, drying, freezing, smoking, canning) and why they’re effective.
Explore how heat is transmitted in different cooking and baking methods (e.g., moist heat methods like poaching, steaming, and boiling vs dry heat methods like roasting, grilling, and sautéing).
Research how climate change is impacting Indigenous foods and foodways.

Language

Read and discuss books about food and family traditions.
Learn new vocabulary related to food preparation (e.g., bake, broil, grill, roast).
Write a poem, letter, song or other narrative to describe food experiences using the five senses.
Draft a recipe as an example of a procedural text (e.g., how to make a salad or yogurt parfait).
Write in cursive to create a draft restaurant menu board (e.g., with today’s specials).
Critically analyze food advertisements.
Research and synthesize information about a food-related topic using a variety of reliable sources.
Learn about traditional foods and foodways in First Nations, Metis, and Inuit cultures and how nations are working towards Indigenous food sovereignty.

Art

Create paintings, drawings, prints or sculptures of students’ favourite fruit or vegetables.
Create a collage using pictures of meals from around the world.
Role play and present with props various age appropriate kitchen skills and activities including families baking cookies, a chef in the kitchen, grandma baking a pie etc.
Make a step-by-step video of students preparing a recipe from start to finish.
Create music with a makey makey piano using apples, bananas or carrots.

Social Science

Help students learn to taste foods and support them in identifying and describing food.
Research and/or prepare cultural foods (invite parents, local elders, local chefs to share their stories and foods).
Explore how food connects people and communities through books and/or local cultural stories and events.
Explore and discuss changes in cooking practices over time and the trends related to eating in restaurants compared to cooking at home.
Explore and discuss gender roles related to food and nutrition and how this has changed over time.

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