Here's a range of activities, each divided into less/more time and complexity. The focus is on where food comes from: eating the seasons, food origins and availability, farming and processing, food labelling, cooking, fantastic food for me!, plus extra activities to support Farming Fortnight which took place from 1-12 June 2020.
Eating the seasons
Less time / Less complex
1. Food and literacy: Make a list of the food in your house that is currently in season in the UK. What could you make with the food you find? Make a seasonal dish this week!
2. Cooking and literacy: What’s on your seasonal menu? Make a list of your favourite seasonal recipes and use these to create a menu to share with your family. For inspiration, you can filter the FFL recipes by food commodity and look at the fruit and vegetable recipes to choose seasonal options.
3. Food and cooking: Let’s eat seasonally! Opting for local, seasonal food tends to be fresher and cheaper. Make one of the FFL recipes with seasonal ingredients. You could try our seasonal couscous salad with cucumber or gnocchi with tomato sauce!
More time / More complex
4. Food and art: What do you know about seasonal food? View the Eat the seasons presentation to learn about when different fruit and vegetables are in season. Make your own poster/infographic showing the different food and when they are in season throughout the year.
5. Food and cooking: What does seasonal food mean to you? Learn more about seasonality using the What’s in season worksheet. There is a recipe for lamb and vegetable crumble which you can modify and make at home!
6. Art and health and wellbeing: Making sure to eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day is really important and choosing seasonal options adds variety. Draw a fruit or vegetable basket to show what is available during the spring, summer, autumn and winter.
Food origins and availability
Less time / Less complex
1. Science and ICT: The food we eat comes from a plant or an animal. Use the click and drag interactive activity to sort the different food into their origin, plant or animal. Alternatively, use the plant or animal worksheet.
2. Cooking, geography and ICT: How well do you know where food is from? View the interactive UK and world maps and drag the different food to the correct parts of the world.
3. Food and literacy: Food can be grown at home/on an allotment or bought from supermarkets, markets and shops that sell just one type of food. List at least five different food items that you can buy from the following shops: baker, butcher, fishmonger and greengrocer.
More time / More complex
4. Food and farming, literacy and art: How much do you know about the fruit and vegetable farm to fork journey? Read through the presentations and watch the videos which show the journey of different fruit and vegetables. Choose two fruit and/or vegetables and create an infographic to explain the information. Include where the food comes from, how it is harvested and how you would eat it.
5. Food and farming, literacy and art: How does food travel from farm to fork? Watch the farm to fork videos and answer the questions on the screen as you go along. Choose a food that hasn’t been shown and draw a story board of its journey from farm to fork.
6. Food and farming and ICT: Click and drag the images in these food chains to show where food comes from! Try fish, eggs, wheat, carrots, potatoes and strawberries! Got more time, create your own game showing where food comes from.
Farming and processing
Less time / Less complex
1. Food and literacy: Write down your favourite meal - then list all the ingredients that are used to make it. Next, show where these ingredients originate. Here’s an example: ham and onion pizza: ham (pork from a pig); onion (onion plant); pizza base (flour from wheat); tomato topping (tomato plant), cheese (dairy from a cow).
2. Food and farming, literacy and art: All of our food has to be grown, reared and caught. Do you know how? Do you know who does it? Let’s find out! For the following items, create a series of ‘food’ cards showing how each is grown, reared or caught for our food.
- Apple juice
- Cheddar cheese
- Wholemeal loaf
- Lettuce, cucumber and tomato salad
- Fish fingers, peas and potato wedges
- Ham and mushroom omelette
3. Food and farming, literacy and art: Use the six ‘Farming food for you’ posters to create a frieze (a long poster!) of how our food is produced and processed. The frieze should show the farm, the farmer, the crops or animals, and the food that is produced.
More time / More complex
4. Food and farming and cooking: Bread is a popular food around the world – with most of it being made from wheat, which is milled into flour. You can find more about its history, production and uses. Your challenge is to ‘be a baker’ or create a ‘super sandwich’ - the choice is yours.
5. Food and farming and art: Use the Food journey cards and sort into correct farm to fork chains. For a quick break, why not complete the Fruit and vegetable dot-to-dots – stating in which season they are grown in the UK.
6. Food and farming and literacy: Watch the where food comes from videos and answer the questions.
- Budding broccoli – video, questions and answers
- Earthy potatoes – video, questions and answers
- Burly beef – video, questions and answers
- Magnificent milk – video, questions and answers
- Tasty tomatoes – video, questions and answers
For more where food comes from videos, click here.
Food labelling
Less time / Less complex
1. Food and farming and ICT: How well do you know your food certification and assurance schemes? Using the interactive activity, match the logo to the food certification and assurance scheme.
2. Food and farming, science and art: What do your eggs tell you? Use the Understanding the labelling of your egg information sheet to find out more about your eggs. Use the internet to research either egg nutrition or egg safety. Show your results in a creative way – why not design a poster, cartoon or a storyboard?
3. Food, farming and safety: Traceability from farm to fork is important when considering the safe production of our food. Food labels on packaged raw meat provide information to support traceability. View the Safe production and processing of food presentation to find out more. Look at the label on some packaged raw meat and identify what is required by law and what is consumer information.
More time / More complex
4. Food and farming: The Red Tractor logo guarantees that food has been produced to a high standard and that animals have been well cared for. To find out more about Red Tractor, view the Food assurance schemes presentation and complete the What is missing? – Red Tractor activity.
5. Food and farming, literacy and cooking: Produce a recipe for your lunch or evening meal with top tips suggesting how to include food certification and assurance scheme ingredients. Use the My recipe template to support.
6. Food, geography and art: Food labels provide a range information that is legally required or just consumer information. Origin information on the label is voluntary, apart from fresh/frozen meat, fish and seafood. However, origin information must never be misleading. Find at least five different packaged fresh, dried or frozen food where the country of origin has been stated on the label. Draw or print a world map and identify the country of origin for each food. Draw the food on the map to build a picture of where in the world your food has come from.
Cooking
Less time / less complex
1. Wibble wobble, jelly on a plate: Make a fantastic jelly using seasonal fruit, such as blueberries and strawberries. You could sing the following nursery rhyme whilst serving it!
Jelly on a plate, jelly on a plate
Wibble wobble, wibble wobble, jelly on a plate
Jelly on a plate, jelly on a plate
Wibble wobble, wibble wobble, jelly on a plate!
2. Eat the seasons: Make a seasonal summer salad to enjoy with your next BBQ, picnic or lunch. A potato salad, made with boiled new potatoes, could be just the thing. Add some lettuce, canned tuna (in spring water), and hard boiled eggs for a quick and easy salad niçoise.
3. Regional dishes: The way food is prepared and made, along with customs, and the use of local and seasonal ingredients often combine to create dishes unique to a particular region. Research ingredients and dishes that are traditional to your local region or a region of your choice. Cook a dish or plan a menu using ingredients from the region. Use the Food provenance on your doorstep poster to support.
More time / more complex
Crimping crazy: Cornish pasties were made for tin miners to eat when they were working underground. The miners held the pastry crust while they ate the rest of pasty and then threw the crust away! Pasties are popular all over the country, but Cornwall produces more than 120 million pasties a year! Crimping is the technique of sealing the pasty and a skilled crimper will crimp, on average, 3 or 4 pasties a minute. Make your own Cornish pasties and see how many you can crimp in a minute.
Quick and easy soda bread: Wheat is grown across the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, but some climates are particularly ideal for growing soft wheat varieties. Soft wheat flours have a low gluten content and are perfect for making biscuits, pancakes, sauces and some breads. Soda bread is a quick and easy recipe that uses plain flour (made from soft wheat) and bicarbonate of soda, rather than yeast. Watch this video and make your own soda bread. A recipe can be found here.
Food and art: Create an edible flower picture using a simple focaccia dough (made with 300g plain flour, ½ x 5ml spoon salt, 2 x 5ml spoons dry yeast, 2 x 15ml spoons olive oil and 250ml warm water). Use herbs for stalks and leaves (basil, chives, mint, parsley, thyme, tarragon and sage are all in season now) and sliced peppers, cherry tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, olives or onions for flowers/petals. Decorate the dough with the ingredients to make a flower and then bake at 220˚C /gas mark 7 for 15-20 minutes.
Fantastic food for me!
1. Go cereal crazy! Wheat is a cereal that is milled to make flour. Cook up a storm with flour and make cheese straws, apple muffins or pizza scones!
2. Moo-velous milk! Milk is produced by dairy cows across the UK, which is then used for drinks, as well as to make cheese and yogurt. Get cooking and make a fruit smoothie, overnight oats or macaroni cheese.
3. Tasty! Beef, lamb and pork is reared around the UK for our food. Let’s make koftas, beef quesadillas or pork Thai bites.
4. Spud-up! Potatoes are grown around the UK and used as the basis of many meals. Wash your potatoes and make stuffed jackets, bombay potato curry or potato crusted pizza!
5. Egg-cellent! Hens lays eggs, of different sizes, which are used in many recipes. Get cracking and make easy veg frittatas, quiche or lemon and coley goujons.
6. Cluck, cluck! Chickens are reared to provide meat for our food. Try chicken nuggets, pitta pockets or chicken tagine.
Extra activities to support Farming Fortnight
Farming Fortnight, a LEAF Education (Linking Environment And Farming) initiative, starts on 1st June 2020 and runs until the 12th June 2020. The fortnight offers young people the opportunity to focus on how their food is produced and some of the farmers behind it.
Each day of Farming Fortnight has its own theme and accompanying social media hashtag to encourage everyone to share their learning experiences online. The themes were developed by students at Brockhill Park Performing Arts College with LEAF Education, so why not join in with your class?
More information about Farming Fortnight can be found here.
Week 1: Themes and a selection of FFL resources to support
Introduction to the British countryside and food production #MarketMonday
- Seasons cards
- The farm visit story
- Down on the farm presentation and worksheet
- Farming food presentation
- Food assurance schemes presentation and worksheet
- How has it changed? activity
- Red meat – the journey from farm to fork poster
- Nose to tail poster
Arable - wheat and oats #TractorTuesday
- Cereals - the journey cards
- Wheat to bread fact sheet
- Flour food – a presentation about food made from flour
- What are grains? - activities and resources
- Wheat farming and processing - activities and resources
- Farming food for you - cereals poster
- Recipes using cereals
Sheep #WoollyWednesday
- Lamb – the journey cards
- Sheep farming in the UK presentation
- Know your lamb cuts poster
- Let’s look at lamb worksheet
- Farming food for you – sheep poster
- Lamb kofta challenge
- Recipes using lamb
Pigs #Oink
- Know your pork cuts poster
- Farming food for you – pigs poster
- Let’s look at pork worksheet
- Recipes using pork
Chickens (poultry) #FeatheredFriday
Week 1: Themes and a selection of FFL resources to support
Cows - beef and dairy #MooingMonday
- Let’s look at beef worksheet
- What happens during cooking a casserole and why?
- Let’s look at red meat worksheet
- Cooking with red meat
- Know your beef cuts poster
- Farming food for you – beef cattle poster
- Recipes using beef
- Milk – the journey cards
- Where does milk come from? presentation
- Milk processing presentation and worksheet
- A year on a dairy farm poster
- A year on a dairy farm advanced poster
- From grass to glass poster
- Recipes using dairy
- Lots of lolly! Time to make milk lollies, using milks from dairy cows around the UK (with some seasonal berries too). Mash 1 banana and 6 strawberries together. Stir in 200ml milk. Pour into lolly moulds and freeze. No moulds, no problem! Use ‘washed’ small yogurt cartoons and teaspoon for a stick! Want to know how milk is produced, click here!
Fruit and Vegetable production #TastyTuesday
- Fruit and vegetable snack cards
- Vegetable cards
- 5 A DAY presentation
- Eat a rainbow worksheet
- Celery – from field to fork presentation
- Cauliflower - from field to fork presentation
- Carrots – from field to fork presentation
- Onions - from field to fork presentation
- Peas – from field to fork presentation
- Raspberries – from field to fork presentation
- Plums – from field to fork presentation
- Apples from field to fork presentation
- Recipes using vegetables
- Recipes using fruit
Woodland #WellyWednesday
Jobs/careers #FutureFarming – resources to support careers in food and farming coming soon on FFL. Read our News article about careers in agriculture here.
Programme summary to recap on what has been learnt #FarmingFriday
Learn with stories 5-11 years (activities around food and farming)
Join Alisha, Jordan, Nicola and Ronnie as they explore healthy eating, cooking and where food comes from.
The stories have been designed to support cross-curricular/ inter-disciplinary learning (with a focus on literacy and numeracy). Each story is supported by a guide, a presentation, and child friendly worksheets. The reading level/ability and associated tasks becomes more complex as you progress through the stories.
The following Learn with stories are about food and farming:
- The colourful present - with a focus on seasonal fruit and vegetables
- The bucket garden - growing fruit and vegetables
- The farm visit - looking at life on a dairy farm
- The bread stories - looks at bread from around the world
- The seaside adventure - looks at fishing and fish dishes
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