Primary

Plan a School Menu
Contributed by second-grade teacher Cindy Arends of Fairview Elementary School in Mora, Minnesota.

What To Do
Once students have completed their Pyramid Cafe® lessons and understand how to plan body-building lunches (see Activity 10 in the Teaching Kit), work with the cafeteria manager to have your students plan a lunch menu for the whole school. You'll need to begin preparing about a month before your class's meal is served. Here's how:

1. Invite the cafeteria manager to visit your class and explain how school menus are planned. There may be a list of choices from each food group that are available through your school's food distributor. Talk about the foods that are available and the serving sizes for each.

2. Work with students to plan the menu. You may wish to choose a specific theme for the menu (Cindy Arends's class chose "The County Fair"). Have students vote on the foods to serve, using their Food Pyramids to make sure they have the right number of servings from each food group.

3. Send home a letter telling parents about the lunch menu and inviting them to join their children for lunch on the day their meal is served.

4. Arrange with the cafeteria manager to have students tour the school kitchen and watch their meal being prepared. Be sure to leave time for students to ask questions.

"We had 60 guests for lunch that day, between parents, grandparents and brothers and sisters. And the menu said, 'Prepared by Mrs. Arends's second-grade class.' For the kids, making the important choice of what to feed the school that day really brought the Food Pyramid to life!"
-Cindy Arends