Working from home, in the office, teaching kids—oh my! Healthy eating is difficult to make a top priority these days. Here’s your #momhack alert: getting kids involved in how their food is grown will make those greens, beans and everything in-betweens more exciting than a bag of chips!
Good news: you don’t need to scour the internet for fun at-home food science ideas. Del Monte Foods, your go-to for fruits and veggies picked and packed at their peak, and GrowingGreat, a non-profit that empowers kids to make healthy choices through food science and nutrition, have paired up to create a super-food, super-fun lesson plan! It’s a free, national STEM Distance Learning Curriculum, as easily accessible as Del Monte Foods! Check out their handy bilingual PDFs and videos that can be accessed on any device. Expect fruitful inspiration–get the whole family involved for a fun weekend activity or let kids explore on their own and keep them entertained, learning and engaged while you work from home! Who knew a veggie could be a kid’s best friend? Each lesson has a challenge, hands-on exploration, taste test, and a parent page with fun facts about food, science discoveries, recipes for kids and more. Read on to learn about three fresh lessons your kids can discover this fall, plus the perfect pairing to keep your family fueled for learning!
Del Monte Foods and GrowingGreat’s free Distance Learning Curriculum is available now. Check them out and grow your child’s learning and love of nutrition today!
1. Powerful Protein
The Challenge: To explore how proteins help fuel and grow our bodies! In this lesson, you’ll distinguish between proteins, carbohydrates and fats, and sort out the sources of the proteins we eat. You’ll use your newly acquired knowledge to build your own protein cookie using both animal and plant proteins. Bonus: This lesson also comes with a printable coloring sheet! Get the lesson here!
Fuel Your Fun With: Del Monte® Oats To Go, the first ready-to-eat, no-prep homestyle oatmeal goodness in a cup that has high amounts of protein, whole grains, fiber and ½ serving of real fruit. With four flavors, everyone can find one they love while they enjoy another type of carbohydrate!
2. Graph Your Groceries
The Challenge: Find a label with the least ingredients, the most ingredients and the most grams of added sugar. Kids will learn how to read food labels and graph their results to see what foods are the healthiest choices. Tasting the products they graph, kids will talk about how the amount of ingredients affects the food’s taste, and record their data. They'll also learn about the canning process and even try it for themselves! Get the lesson here!
Fuel Your Fun With: Del Monte® Fresh Cut® Blue Lake® Green Beans, with a so-simple ingredient list we can all get behind: Green beans, water, sea salt. That’s all!
3. Make Your Own Fruit Drink Without Added Sugar
The Challenge: Develop a fruit drink without any added sugar and grow new veggies from old veggies. Kids will taste test orange soda, a sports drink, and mandarin oranges, discussing the difference in taste and ingredients. By measuring the amount of sugar on the label, and pouring it into a cup, kids will be able to see how much sugar is in each. Kids will even get to make their own no sugar added fruit drink. There’s also a no sugar added snack recipe parents and kids can make together.
Just like people, plants get thirsty too! Using carrots, beets and potatoes, kids will determine how much water they drink over time, finally deciding how much water and room they need to grow, and then planting them! Get the lesson here!
Fuel Your Fun With: Del Monte® Fruit Cup® Snacks, packed with flavor that comes from 100% fruit juice! While you’re snacking on your fruit cup, you can even use some of the fruit or fruit juice for a DIY fruit drink.
Del Monte Foods and GrowingGreat’s free Distance Learning Curriculum is available now. Check them out and grow your child’s learning and love of nutrition today!
—Jamie Aderski
