Children listen to and discuss the book Plants Feed Me, by Lizzy Rockwell. They create a salad recipe that includes leaves, roots, fruits, seeds, and stems.
Read Plants Feed Me and pause to discuss the illustrations.
In some plants, we eat the seeds. What tasty seeds do you see here?
Materials
- Plants Feed Me by Lizzy Rockwell
- Fresh vegetables—choose examples of produce that come from different plant parts, such as leaves (lettuce or parsley), roots (carrot or radish), stems (celery or asparagus), fruits (cucumber or pepper), and seeds (fresh peas)
- Chart paper
- Markers for teacher and children
- Sticky notes
Preparation
- Familiarize yourself with the pictures and text in Plants Feed Me.
Directions: Lesson 8
Circle Time: Introduction
- Read Plants Feed Me, by Lizzy Rockwell. Take time to explore the illustrations with the class, encouraging children to name and discuss the fruits and vegetables they see in the pictures.
- Show the fresh vegetables you have brought in (for example: lettuce, parsley, carrot, radish, celery, cucumber, fresh peas). Invite children to think about the foods they eat at home and include them in a brainstorm discussion. Possible discussion ideas:
- What part of the plant are we eating when we eat a (carrot, cucumber, pea)?
- What other roots, fruits, stems, and leaves can we eat?
- Tell children that later in the day they will make a tasty salad snack, using vegetables of their choice. (See the Salad Snack activity for details.)
Circle Time: Wrap-Up
- Reread Plants Feed Me, making connections to the salad snack the class ate earlier during snack time.
- Create a group salad recipe using one ingredient from each category: a vegetable that is a leaf, a vegetable that is a root, a vegetable that is a fruit, a vegetable that is a stem, a vegetable that is a seed.
- At the top of the chart paper, write the salad recipe on chart paper.
- Draw a large salad bowl at the bottom of the recipe. Have children draw pictures of the vegetables in the recipe on sticky notes or pieces of paper. Then they stick or glue the pictures in the salad bowl.
