Environmental Lessons & Activities
How Long Until Dirt
Students will understand the difference between composting and wasting food.
Curriculum Expectations
- 3s110: Identify living things found in the soil
- 3s111: Demonstrate awareness of the importance of recycling organic materials in soils
- 3e5: Produce pieces of writing using a variety of forms
- 3e51: Listen to discussions and ask questions to clarify meaning
- 3e27: Select and correctly use the format suited to their purpose for writing
- 3e66: Create simple media works
- 3m36: Solve problems related to their day-to-day environment using measurement and estimation
- 3m54: Estimate, measure, and record the mass of familiar objects using standard units (gram, kilogram)
- 3p1: Describe the relationship among healthy eating practices, healthy active living, and healthy bodies
- 3p6: Describe the benefits of healthy food choices, physical activity, and healthy bodies
Background Information
Worms don’t really need to be fed from student lunches. The motto of ” take what you need but eat what you take” needs to become a habit. Opening a large package of carrots or peeling a banana does not make way for taking one bite and throwing the rest away. Students can throw out more food than they eat. Entire sandwiches and slightly eaten apples end up in composters. No one is rich enough to throw away food.
Accountability
Teachers and students need to be aware of the waste issues behind food waste and its effects on garbage and composting. Have a weekly cooking contest (“Waste Watcher Wednesdays”) or show and tell to showcase creative uses for success in environmentally friendly eating.
Teacher Notes
- Materials: Compost bucket, scale, vermi-composter, gloves, knife, samples of fruit.
- Either have a student eat an apple until they think it is done or take an anonymous apple from the class composter.
- Weigh the apple in grams.
- Put on the gloves and cut away the still uneaten portion.
- Weigh the actual mass of the core.
- Discuss with the class the waste of food issues in the class.
- Have a show and tell about what is in the composter at that time.
- Problem-solve what to do about leftovers after lunches so good food doesn’t go to waste.
- Problem-solve food accident and storage techniques that are environmentally friendly.
- Create a “cookbook” of creative lunch choices that can be posted on the school’s web site for parents to read.
Home Extension
What do I like to eat and what do I get for lunch? Share Canada’s Food Guide and alerts about food allergies (peanuts) that can affect choices in the class. Explain to parents about the regular cooking “show” and ask for their support.
Lesson Comments
- What changed in the attitude towards food?
- What creative solutions did the students come up with regarding with food storage?
