PURDUE UNIVERSITY 4-H-1036 Foods Curriculum User Guide

4-H-1036 Foods Curriculum

Project Helper Guide

Note to Project Helper

Congratulations on having a young person ask you to be his or
her helper. Your role as a project helper is very important to the
young person’s total educational experience. Not only will you
provide encouragement and recognition; you will also be the
key person with whom the young person shares each of the
experiences in this 4-H activity guide.

The Foods curriculum series is designed to help youth have
fun in the kitchen as they learn basic food preparation skills,
prepare different foods, do fun experiments, and go on factfinding
missions. These educational materials have been
created with a focus on healthy food selection, smart food
purchasing, food safety and science, food preparation, food
preservation, and careers in the food industry. The design
emphasizes teaching young people the importance of balance
with their food choices as they are building healthy food habits
that will carry them to adulthood.

Food is meant to be enjoyed, but it is also important to find a
balance of regularly making healthy choices and occasionally
indulging in a treat. The recipes that are included were
developed with this concept in mind. Youth learn to prepare
recipes that encourage increased fruit, vegetable, low-fat dairy,
lean protein, and whole grain consumption. They will also
be challenged to increase the nutritional value of recipes by
making healthy ingredient choices.

Five pieces are available in the Foods curriculum. There are
four activity guides—Fantastic Foods, Tasty Tidbits, You’re the
Chef, and Foodworks. These guides have been designed to be
developmentally appropriate for grades 3–4, 5–6, 7–9, and 10–
12, respectively, but may be used by youth in any grade based
on their skills and expertise. The fifth piece, the Project Helper
Guide, provides you with additional background and tips on
helping youth through the activities in their guide. The Project
Helper Guide is available online as a free downloadable item.

The Experiential Learning Model

Learning by doing is one of the main reasons 4-H has been so widely recognized and respected in the field of informal education. It engages the learner, encouraging
them to think more, work hard, and ultimately learn more thoroughly than with traditional teaching methods.

The Indiana 4-H Foods curriculum follows a model known as the experiential learning process. Experiential
learning is more than just doing activities. It involves discussing the activity, drawing conclusions from the activity, and applying them to the real
world.
The experiential model and its five steps are used in each activity in this guide as a means to help youth gain the most from the learning experiences.

Pfeiffer, J.W., & Jones, J.E., “Reference Guide to Handbooks and Annuals”
© 1983 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The five steps encourage youth to try to do the activity before being told or shown how
(experience). As the helper, you will want to help the youth describe what they experience and their reaction (share). You can use the questions listed in the activity to help the youth:
• Discuss what was most important about what they did (process);
• Relate the life skill practiced to their own everyday experiences (generalize); and
• Share how they will use the life skill and project skill in other parts of their lives (apply).
Activities in the youth manuals are designed to help the 4-H members work through the entire experiential learning process as they do the activity and record their answers.

How Experiential Learning Works Do
1. Experience – Begin with a concrete experience. This can be an individual or group activity that involves “doing something.” Reflect
2. Share – Next get the group or individual to talk about what they experienced when they were doing the activity. Share reactions and observations. Talk freely.
Sharing questions:
What did you do?
What happened?
How did you feel to…?
What was the most difficult? Easiest?

3. Process – Discuss how questions are created by the activity.
Processing questions (use information generated from sharing questions):
What problems or issues seemed to occur over and over?
What similar experience(s) have you had?
Apply

4. Generalize – Find general trends or common lesson in the experience.
Identify the important points that apply to the real world.
Generalizing questions:
What did you learn about yourself through this activity?
What did you learn about making decisions (or other life skills)?
How do the major themes or ideas relate to real life and not just the
activity?
How did you go about making your decision?

5. Apply – Talk about how the new information can be applied to everyday life
or sometime in the future.
Applying questions:
How can you apply what you learned to a new
situation?
How will the issues raised by this activity be useful in the future?
How will you act differently in the future as a result of this activity?

Interactive Demonstrations

An interactive demonstration is a fun way for youth to share what
they have learned with others. The key is getting the audience
involved in doing what they are doing, not just showing them. Youth
can give an interactive demonstration at a 4-H club meeting or
anywhere a lot of people gather, like their school or a county or state
fair.

Youth can choose almost any topic in the Foods curriculum or
another topic of interest to them. Here are some questions to ask
them when they are choosing a topic:

• Is it something that can be done in three to five minutes?
• Is it something other people might like to learn about?
• Is there something hands-on for the audience to do?
• Can the supplies for the hands-on activity be used over and over again, or do they have to be replaced every time? Having to replace them adds to the cost.

A demonstration should last about three to five minutes, and youth need to be able to do it over and over again with different people. They should have a conversation with the people they are demonstrating to. Their goal is to involve the audience. Youth can do this by having audience members do what they are doing, play a game, answer questions, or do a hands-on activity. Some example: how to use a measuring up or measuring spoon, or how to find
things on a Nutrition Facts label.

The Foods Curriculum Format

The content of the 4-H Foods curriculum has a much broader focus
than skills related to food preparation. Each of the four activity guides
includes a series of lessons that focus on these six areas.

• Healthy food selection
• Smart food purchasing
• Food safety and science
• Food preparation
• Food preservation
• Careers in the food industry

The lessons are consistently taught around MyPlate, the USDA’s guidelines for healthy eating. Recipes are designed to increase consumption of fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy, lean protein, and whole grains in accordance with MyPlate recommendations.

At the upper left of each lesson, a Recipe Box identifies the project skill and a life skill for that activity. Project skills are what the youth are learning to do. Life skills are broader abilities that can help them successfully live a productive and satisfying life. The Foods
curriculum targets the following life skills, grouped into the four H’s in
the clover—Head, Heart, Hands, and Health:

Head
Using scientific methods
Processing information
Understanding systems
Managing time and resources
Practicing creativity
Making decisions
Planning and organizing
Understanding where food comes from

Heart
Communicating
Hands
Mastering technology
Completing a task

Health
Making healthy lifestyle
choices
Preventing illness

Each lesson also includes a list of supplies/ingredients, background information, steps to complete the activity, and Kitchen Talk questions that allow youth to reflect on what they’ve learned. To the right of some lessons are Extra Bites of additional information that complement the instruction or suggest variations of the activity.

Recipes focus on balancing health food choices with occasional treats and reflect appropriate portion size. A Nutrition Facts label is included for each recipe. Youth are challenged to increase recipes’ nutritional value by adding or deleting ingredients. High school-aged students learn to adjust recipes for special dietary restrictions.

We hope this bright and consistent approach helps 4-H members enjoy learning about foods, and encourages them to balance their food choices with an active lifestyle.

NOTE: See pages 14-17 for a list of targeted life skills and project skills for
each activity by curriculum level.

Everyone Needs Nutrients

Nutrients are the special substances that your body gets from the
food you eat. Your body needs many different nutrients, because
each nutrient does a certain job for your body. You need a lot of
some nutrients and not as much of others. Your body is an amazing
machine that knows how to handle all the nutrients you give it.
There are five important food groups: fruits, vegetables, grain,
protein, and dairy. Each of these food groups contains a different set
of nutrients. When you eat foods from every food group every day,
you are sure to get all the nutrients your body needs.

Draw a line between each nutrient and the job it does.

Nutrients: How do I get them?

How do you know what foods to eat to get all the nutrients your body
needs to stay healthy? There’s an easy way to check. Use MyPlate
as a guide when choosing foods at meal times. Make half your plate
fruits and veggies, choose a lean protein and a whole grain, and
add a glass of milk or cup of yogurt, and you’ll be on your way to
a healthy life. How would you fill MyPlate at breakfast, lunch, and
dinner to make sure you get all the nutrients you need?
You can also log on to www.ChooseMyPlate.gov, where you can
develop your very own MyPlate recommendations and eat the
suggested amounts of each food group every day. On this website,
you can also keep track of your food intake and exercise!

GOOD SOURCES OF
VITAMIN A :
sweet potatoes, carrots,
spinach, kale and other dark
green leafy vegetables, and
winter squash.

GOOD SOURCES OF
VITAMIN C :
bell peppers, broccoli, Brussels
sprouts, strawberries,
pineapple, oranges, kiwifruit,
cantaloupe, and cauliflower.

GOOD SOURCES OF
CALCIUM:
dairy products including milk,
yogurt, and cheese; dark green
leafy vegetables; and salmon.

Everyone Needs Nutrients

Putting MyPlate Together

MyPlate uses the five food groups as building blocks for a healthy diet. Before you
eat, think about what goes on your plate or in your cup or bowl. Use the five food
group shapes to build your healthy plate.

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December November 2021

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