| A few months ago, the troop leader put a call out to parents (or unofficial step-parents in my case) to ask if anyone was interested in hosting a Try-It Workshop. I looked over the list of possible Try-Its and selected this one on the spot. I asked what the girls needed to do to earn it. The answer came back that the girls needed to do four activities and while there's a list of possible activities, "there is no badge police." I looked at the "official" activities and decided to make up my own activities.
Leading up to the big day, I went to the farmers' market and selected a bunch of foods, including many funny looking fruits and veggies (either exotic varieties of normal foods, or foods that are strange altogether). Then I went to the co-op and picked up a bunch of beans, nuts, and grains (and ingredients for Ants on a Log).
When the Girl Scouts began arriving, their first stop was our garden. This wasn't officially part of the badge, but it was incredibly cool to see the kids excited about eating our nasturtiums, sugarsnap peas, and carrots. Our own Girl Scout loves picking carrots but then won't eat them voluntarily unless they are in the form of carrot cake. The other girls actually ate the carrots. At least, somebody did. Before we came inside, one of the girls told my boyfriend's daughter that her house is "awesome." Yay!
Inside, we started by sitting in a circle. I asked why we eat. The girls gave answers like "to grow strong" and "because we're hungry." Right, I agreed. "We need food to give us energy and to help our body grow, and our body tells us that by making us feel hungry. And why else do we eat?" That was a stumper. "Because it's fun! Because food tastes good. And because it's fun to sit down together and share a meal."
Next, I asked them to go around a circle and name a food they don't like. I believe that every food name was in the vegetable food group. Broccoli was unpopular. So were brussel sprouts. For mine, I said arugula. I wanted to make the point to the girls that it is OK to dislike a healthy food or two. Even grown-ups sometimes don't like every vegetable.
Then I asked them to name a healthy food they DO like. The first kid said fish and that started a trend. The other answers were nearly all fish, sushi, or tuna. Only the last kid named something else (strawberries). And with that, we moved over to the table, where my big spread of food was laid out.
Activity #1: Sorting Foods Into Food Groups
I started by holding up 2 kinds of nuts and an onion and asking the girls which two were similar and which one was different. They pointed to the nuts. I asked why. "They are both nuts," the girls said. "Right! So, we put foods into groups! Have you talked about food groups in school?" I asked. They had. I gave each girl a different card with a food group on it. Instead of doing the typical 4 food groups, I separated them into Nuts, Beans, Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, Dairy, and Meat & Eggs. We had more groups than Brownies, so I didn't hand out any animal product categories. None of the foods on the table fell in those categories anyway.
We went around the table with each girl taking turns locating a food in her category. Then I would identify it. My boyfriend's daughter had a bit of a leg up over the others because she's met some of my "weird" foods before in my various attempts to get her to eat vegetables. Here are a few pictures:
Banana, orange, mandarin, dried fuyu persimmons, a cherimoya, a passion fruit, an oro blanco grapefruit, and a Fuji apple
Later, when we taste the foods, the girls surprised me by disliking the cherimoya and the persimmons. No one would even try the grapefruit, but everyone loved the mandarin. (I opted for all-sweet mandarins instead of getting the sweet-tart variety.) Nobody liked the kumquats that are on this plate but not visible in the picture either.
Kale, broccoli raab, and purple and yellow carrots
The kids told me the broccoli raab was "weird" but they were all eager to taste the carrots - especially the purple ones.
Asparagus, a chioggia beet, and a golden beet
One of the girls shocked me by telling me that she LOVES asparagus. I got the kids to each try the chioggia beet by telling them that some people call it a "candycane beet" and by slicing it so that everyone got pink and white striped pieces.
The kids also taste my "cheddar" cauliflower, blueberries, cooked wheat berries, chickpeas, and several kinds of nuts. The macadamia nuts were a particular hit, especially when I told the girls they came from Hawaii (although the ones we ate were grown locally). One girl told me the chickpeas look like garbanzo beans (smart kid!) and another girl asked if she could eat ALL of the chickpeas after everyone got a taste (I said yes).
To wrap up this activity, I told the kids that it's important to eat a wide variety of foods and to include foods in each food group in their diets. Then I asked what was missing on the table. "Cabbage?" one girl guessed. "Well, that's missing too," I said. "But how about meat, eggs, and dairy?" I explained that everything we saw here came from plants, and that meat, eggs, and dairy all came from animals. We listed off some healthy animal products (milk, yogurt, turkey) and then I told the girls that it's OK to eat some animal products but not at the expense of a wide variety of plenty of plants in their diets.
Activity 2: Veggie Rainbows
In between the activities, I let the kids have "silly time" to go to the bathroom, play with our pets, and goof off. Then we got back together and I handed out paper and markers. I showed them my "veggie rainbow" as an example of what we were going to do and explained that plants use colors to show us that they have lots of vitamins in them. We should eat fruits and vegetables of different colors every day. To remind ourselves of this, we then drew charts of vegetables in each color of the rainbow:
Here's one of our "Veggie Rainbows"
This activity seemed to be a bit hit or miss. It got a bit interesting - which I had feared - since I had just showed the girls so many foods in unconventional colors. Now they wanted to know what ELSE was possible that they had never seen. Do potatoes come in green?
Some of the kids finished quickly and went off to play. Two of the others worked on theirs more slowly, and one did nothing at all and asked me "Do I have to do this?" (I told her no.)
Activity #3: How Much Added Sugar is in That?
In this activity, we started by measuring out how much added sugar we should eat every day. I used 10 teaspoons for that, even though I've seen recommendations that we should eat less. Then we measured out how much sugar was in each of the following: Trix cereal, Pop tarts, fruit snacks, Fruit by the Foot, Hostess cupcakes, Capri Sun, chocolate milk, a can of Coke, a 20 oz bottle of Coke, and a Big Gulp of Coke. I let the girls take turns doing the measuring while their peers counted for them.
I'm not sure how effective this was for the girls. They are able to add but I'm not sure if they are old enough to do it as naturally as an adult. As an adult I look at the stuff on the table and say "Wow, if you start your day with 2 Pop Tarts, then have Fruit by the Foot for lunch, and then have some Capri Sun at your Girl Scout meeting, you've gone WAY over how much sugar you should have for the day and you haven't even had dessert!" I'm not sure if the kids got that. I did say exactly that to them but their attention spans were lost very quickly during this activity. The kids were mostly interested in having a turn measuring the sugar and after everyone got a turn they all went off to play while the girl whose turn it was sat at the table alone measuring sugar.
For the record, all of these foods are pretty darn bad for you. Capri Sun, which the girls get at every Girl Scout meeting, has 4.5 teaspoons of sugar in it - nearly half of the day's total going by the generous 10 teaspoons per day allotment. But the idea was for the girls to stick around for the big finish, which is a Big Gulp of Coke with 24 teaspoons of sugar in it. Instead of making the girls count that many teaspoons, I had them use a half cup.
How much added sugar is in various popular foods?
Activity #4: Cooking Healthy Food
I had planned to have the girls make Ants on a Log, which they did make. Except we immediately got "I don't like..." complaints. The snack is peanut butter spread on celery, with raisins stuck in it. Some girls didn't like celery, some didn't like peanut butter, and some didn't like raisins. One didn't like all three. I told them that nobody had to eat anything she didn't like.
I gave our celery-hater a piece of toast to spread peanut butter on, but instead she came up with her own creation - "Ants on a Finger" (peanut butter spread on her finger with raisins in it). The girl who hated everything got a peanut butter and honey sandwich, upon her request. Then I pulled out hummus and told the kids they could dip carrots and celery in it. And I had one of the girls help me make air-popped popcorn as an alternative snack for anyone who didn't like the other stuff.
Wrap-Up
Last, I called the girls together for a quick wrap up. "Where does healthy food come from?" I asked them. "A farm!" one said. "You can grow it," said another. "Right," I told them, "so healthy food comes from nature. Where does unhealthy food come from?" The kids said "From the store." One actually said "They take healthy food and add fat, salt, and sugar to it." (Wow, has this kid read the David Kessler book?)
I told the girls that they were right, and that they should look for foods that are from nature or as close to that as possible. Then I asked them why they thought companies make unhealthy foods. "Because we eat them," they said. "Right," I told them. "To make money." I started to try to make a further point about this, but their attention span was totally shot, and they'd been really good all day. We had a very successful afternoon and hopefully each girl got something valuable out of the experience. So with that, I gave each girl her badge and told them they could play until their parents showed up. (If you ever try this with second graders, wait until the parents show up to distribute the badges!) |
