Souperservice Kids
How might individuals and society address the issues of poverty, homelessness and hunger, and their underlying causes?
Photo Credit: Soup Challenge by Phil Dowsing Creative is licensed under CC by 2.0
Students gain awareness of the importance of healthy food and learn more about hunger and homelessness in their community. At a school event with their families, they make a dry soup mixture to donate to individuals who attend a local soup kitchen.
In this lesson, students preserve vegetables through dehydration. The lesson includes multidisciplinary centers related to vegetable harvesting. They will build skills working as a group and contributing to the common good.
The purpose of this class is to raise the students' awareness of the five senses and the role the senses play in making food choices. The teacher will read a book about the senses and provide the students with a variety of center activities. Parent helpers will facilitate the centers and assist in gathering the appropriate materials.
In this lesson, the students will learn about the structure of the food pyramid. They will study which foods are healthy and which foods should be eaten in small amounts. Through reading and a variety of multidisciplinary centers, the students will recognize that they have to make choices about what they eat. The purpose of this lesson is to introduce the students to the food pyramid and to raise their consciousness about the need of all people to have nutritious food. The students will become sensitive to the fact that not everyone is able to eat a healthy diet every day.
In this lesson, a farmer visits the classroom to share information about growing food and talk about the process of producing and selling foods so that families can buy it. Students will learn about farmers' roles in and contributions to society. They will recognize the interdependence of all people in a community. They will learn about preserving food for future use. This lesson will raise their awareness of the importance of sharing resources in the community for the common good.
This lesson introduces the students to concepts about homelessness, hunger and philanthropy. A story about a Chinese boy who chooses to give his precious four dollars ("lucky money") to a homeless man sets the tone for initial discussions about selflessness, small ways to help and hunger. Several interdisciplinary centers focus on the concept of home.
Students will think of ways that they can be (or have been) philanthropists. A puppet or doll tells about going to a soup kitchen and gets the students excited about providing food for a soup kitchen. A variety of multidisciplinary centers focus on soup kitchens. At the end of the lesson, students begin preparing for a family night of assembling dried soup.
The entire family is invited to a family night. The students display their work from the unit as well as perform some songs or dramatizations. The families will prepare jars of dried soup mix according to the recipe provided. The jars will be shared with families who visit a local soup kitchen.