- any plants children are growing
- plant
MA Standards:
Speaking and Listening/SL.PK.MA.1: Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners during daily routines and play.
/Language/L.PK.MA.6: Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, listening to books read aloud, activities, and play.
MA Draft Standards:
Earth and Space Sciences/Earth and Human Activity/ESS3.A: Engage in discussion and raise questions using examples about how humans use local resources (e.g., soil, water) to meet their needs. [Cause and Effect]
Head Start Outcomes:
Language Development/Receptive Language: Attends to language during conversations, songs, stories, or other learning experiences.
Language Development/Expressive Language: Uses language to express ideas and needs.
Talk Together: Plants As Food
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
STEM Key Concepts: There are many different types of plants; Many foods that animals, including humans, eat come from plants; We eat certain leaves, roots, fruits, and seeds
ELA Focus Skills: Listening and Speaking, Vocabulary
Educator Prep: Before beginning the activity, if you have already covered the five senses, review them with children. If you have not introduced them, introduce them to children. (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell)
Review with children that animals—including humans—eat plant foods and other foods. Review with children that the animals and people in Chicks and Salsa wanted to introduce tastier foods into their mealtimes. Discuss how people eat food because it is a basic need, but we like to eat foods that taste good.
- Read some of the words the characters in Chicks and Salsa used to describe food and point out to children that these words help the reader know how good the food tasted and smelled, for example, “tasty tang of tomatoes,” “enticing aromas,” delightful deliciousness of cheese.” Encourage children to describe a favorite fruit or vegetable.
- Tell children they are going to eat some plant foods and compare how they taste, smell, feel, and look.