Introduction
Our activity called Bocados: when nutrition meets the SDGs takes place in the Open Lab. It is carried out as a complement to our Bocados exhibition, for both primary and secondary school pupils in groups of a maximum of 30 pupils. It lasts approximately one and a half hours. The activity I am going to talk about was done with children in the 5th year of primary school (9-10).
Stages of implementation
The activity lasts approximately 1.5 hours and is divided into:
Introduction
- Activity 1: Discover cereal
- Activity 2: Fruits for everyone
- Activity 3: Be a molecular chef.
We take the students up to the laboratory and seat them at 5 tables, on which we place the material necessary for each activity (iPad, cereal grains, images of Europeana, papers and all the material necessary for the preparation of the fake caviar). To accompany the explanations I use a PowerPoint to make it more visual.
The introduction consists of the projection of a 7-minute video about the SDGs. At the end, we ask a series of questions to see if they are aware of the SDGs and what they understand by nutrition.
Each activity is related to a goal.
ACTIVITY 1: SDG 2 Zero Hunger. We explain the importance of cereals in good nutrition because they provide energy from the carbohydrates they contain. And of the need to maintain and improve the cultivation of cereals so that they are accessible to the entire world population. Next, they are given some images obtained from Europeana (they are explained what this platform is and what it is used for) together with small bags with samples of the 8 most important cereals, and they are given 5 minutes to observe them. Using the iPad that we have left on each table, we proceed to do a Kahoot of 8 simple questions about these cereals to see if they have managed to associate the grain with the plant or what uses they can have. This activity lasts 20 minutes.
ACTIVITY 2: SDG 1: End poverty. We talk about the importance of making food as fundamental for proper nutrition as fruit (rich in minerals and vitamins) available to all people in all corners of the world. Using the Europeana website, we show them images of what can be done with Origami and we propose that they try to make several fruits with coloured paper and templates of 3 different fruits.
ACTIVITY 3: SDG 4 quality education. Today there are still children who do not have access to quality education and this is something we have to work to achieve. We emphasised that good nutrition can influence people’s educational development and the importance of teaching children from an early age how to eat properly, what foods to eat and how to cook them in order to get the best out of them and thus be strong enough to face the challenges of everyday life. In the practical part we teach them how to make fake caviar using simple ingredients and science as tools.
In each of the activities we try to have a dialogue between the students and ourselves to make it more enjoyable and to allow them to express doubts, ideas or thoughts related to the subject we are dealing with.
Outcomes
As an educator the aim of this activity is:
That they see nutrition as something important, that a good diet is necessary and has an effect on how we develop in our lives and at an educational level.
To discover consultation tools such as Europeana (I could see that most of them did not know about it).
To raise awareness of the SDGs and how we can participate in this global project from our own home. There are many who have not heard of them.
This way of teaching, more entertaining, with talks, experiments, games… etc., helps students a lot, it makes the issues closer to their lives. As an educator in a science museum, I have been lucky enough to be able to carry out activities of this kind and I consider it a very valuable resource.
Link to the learning scenario implemented: //teachwitheuropeana.eun.org/learning-scenarios/bites-when-nutrition-meets-sdgs-ls-me-554/
Do you want to discover more stories of implementation? Click here.
CC BY 4.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Rippl-Rónai Municipal Museum with County Scope – Kaposvár.
