Nutrition

Make a list of fruits and a list of vegetables. Remember, all fruits have seeds.

Plan a good meal using My Plate guidelines. Cut and glue pictures from a magazine or draw them.

Explain in a paragraph why eating correctly is important to your health.

Explain in a paragraph why people don't eat correctly even when they know how or that they should.

Add together how many different fruits and vegetables are offered on your school lunch menu for a week.

Try some new fruits or vegetables that are not usually served at school. Make a graph showing how many students tried and/or liked each one.

Keep track of your meals for a day. Using the internet or another source, determine as closely as possible the calories provided by that day's food. Were you eating the correct amount of calories for your body? Use this chart to determine how many calories you should consume.

Gather some common foods eaten by your class. Weigh them and then leave them uncovered for a week. Weigh them again. Calculate the percent of the food that evaporated as water during that week. Discuss what relationship the water plays in our health.

Examples of patterns could include that all animals need food in order to live and grow, and the different kinds of food needed by different types of animals. Animals obtain their food from plants or from other animals.

All organisms have body parts. Different animals use their body parts in different ways to take in food. Animals have body parts that capture and convey different kinds of information needed for growth and survival. Animals respond to these inputs with behaviors that help them survive.

Animals have various body systems with specific functions for sustaining life: skeletal, circulatory, respiratory, muscular, digestive, etc. Examples of structures could include digestive organs such as the stomach.

The food of almost any kind of animal can be traced back to plants. Some animals eat plants for food and other animals eat the animals that eat plants. Emphasis is on the idea that matter that is not food (air, water, decomposed materials in soil) is changed by plants into matter that is food.

The energy released from food was once energy from the sun that was captured by plants. Food provides animals with the materials they need for body repair and growth and the energy they need to maintain body warmth and for motion. Examples of models could include diagrams and flow charts.

Food webs can be broken down into multiple energy pyramids. Concepts should include the 10% rule of energy.

Within individual organisms, food moves through a series of chemical reactions in which it is broken down and rearranged to form new molecules, to support growth, or to release energy. Emphasis is on describing that molecules are broken apart and put back together and that in this process, energy is released. Elements in the products are the same as the elements in the reactant.

In multicellular organisms, the body is a system of multiple interacting subsystems. These subsystems are groups of cells that work together to form tissues. Tissues form organs that are specialized for particular body functions. Examples could include the interaction of subsystems within a system and the normal functioning of those systems.