Food Guide Pyramid Activity

Of course, Thanksgiving is a terrific opportunity to discuss pilgrims, indians, turkeys and gratitude. But with all the eating we do this time of year, it's also a really great time to talk about food and nutrition.

We had fun doing a group lesson on the food guide pyramid. I used yarn and pushpins to make the pyramid on the side of a cardboard box. Then after a brief lesson on the food groups, we looked through newspapers to find pictures of food items and then pasted them into their correct food category on the pyramid.

We all had fun hunting for items, deciding where they go, cutting and gluing. Here's what we ended up with:

Believe it or not, we had a hard time finding items for the grains group. So I ended up printing some things out on the computer to stick in there.

I also did some research to find out how much of each food group each member of our family should be eating based on age, gender, and activity level using this site. I wrote that information next to each category on the pyramid. Now when we eat my kids are always commenting on what food group they are eating from.