Exploring Home With Food

Summary 

 Our personal associations with food provide powerful ways for us to connect to our family, our emotions, and our senses of belonging, comfort, and joy. In this lesson, you will reflect on food that reminds you of home. You will then make that food and capture your cooking process in a photo diary.

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Time

10-30 minutes (plus the cooking time of the recipe you choose) 

Before you get started

You will need a phone or camera to take photos. If you don’t have access to a phone or camera, use a blank sheet to describe what you find. 

Materials
  • Device to take pictures with, or paper and pencil 
  • Ingredients for your recipe 
WRITE

When you hear the word home, what comes to mind? Create a word association map in the space below describing your personal associations, thoughts, and feelings with the word home.

WRITE

Spend five minutes free-writing about food that reminds you of home. Answer the following questions in your free-write. What is that food? Why is it important to you? Why does it remind you of home? Who at home makes that food? Describe a time when you ate that food. 

MAKE

Cook the food you described in your free-write. Ask someone in your home to help you cook or consider using facetime or Zoom to cook with someone that is familiar with the recipe for that food. 

CREATE
  • Create a photo diary of four to eight pictures that shows the process of you making your recipe. Please include the following: 
  • At least one picture of your ingredients. What did you use to make the food? 
  • At least one picture of the process of cooking your recipe. 
  • A picture of the finished food. 
  • Pictures of items in your home that you associate with that food. Think about the people, feelings, and thoughts that food represents for you. How would you represent those people, feelings, and thoughts in a photo? 
  • If you don’t have access to a camera, describe four to eight items on a piece of paper. 
REFLECT

Describe two of the photos you captured. What do these photos represent to you?

1.

 

2.

 

Student Notes
  • Want to explore further? Write a story or poem inspired by one of the photos you captured. 
  • Extend your reflections on the photos you captured. Try describing those photos differently. Try describing them without using any of the words you wrote down above. How would you describe the images in a different way?
  • Create a list of more foods that remind you of the home that you would like to repeat this activity with. 
Notes for Teachers/Parents
  • In the lesson, we don’t direct students to where they should post their pictures. We like using the site Padlet to encourage students to display their photos. If you want support on how to use Padlet in this lesson, feel free to email learning@edibleschoolyard.org
  • This activity supports students in imagining; activities and lessons use creative expression, including poetry and drawing, to engage with the garden, food, and cooking. 
  • This activity integrates experiences that support the development of relationships to food and the land.
  • The question: What can we provide to our students so that they can still feel the same sense of connection, joy, and belonging to food in their home classroom environment? guides this lesson. Using this question, think about different prompts or activities that you can use to expand this lesson.

 Authored by Raquel Vigil