What healthy foods do food banks and soup kitchens provide? Show them in an awareness-building grocery-bag mobile.

• 1.

  Being hungry is a strong feeling. It’s hard to think about anything else but food. In every country, there are people who never know whether they will have something to eat for their next meal. Contact a local food bank or soup kitchen to find out what kinds of foods it offers to hungry people.

• 2.

  Design a food mobile. On paper plates, recycled file folders, or pieces of brown paper bags, draw the kinds of foods available at your food bank with Crayola® Markers. Cut out your drawings with Crayola Scissors. Complete the other side of the food pictures. Punch a hole in each piece and tie it on yarn or string.

• 3.

  Hang the mobile. Turn a paper lunch bag upside down and write your message on the sides. Poke a hole in the center of the bag’s bottom. Loop and knot yarn through the hole for the mobile hanger. Punch holes along the open end of the bag. Tie food drawings to the bag. The mobile looks like food is falling out of an open grocery bag. Hang in a prominent place to remind people to donate generously.

Standards

• LA: Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
• LA: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.
• LA: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
• LA: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions with diverse partners on grade level topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.
• SS: Explore and describe similarities and differences in the ways groups, societies, and cultures address similar human needs and concerns.
• SS: Describe ways in which language, stories, folktales, music, and artistic creations serve as expressions of culture and influence behavior of people living in a particular culture.
• VA: Intentionally take advantage of the qualities and characteristics of art media, techniques, and processes to enhance communication of experiences and ideas.
• VA: Select and use the qualities of structures and functions of art to improve communication of ideas.

Adaptations

• If possible, organize a field trip to a local food bank for students. Prior to arriving, students compose questions for their tour guide. After the visit, students post their learning to a class blog.
• What types of food are most in need at a food bank? Students investigate this question and prepare a presentation for the community or parents to kick off a school-wide food drive. Students may want to have a theme for their food drive and create an original character that represents their efforts to feed the needy. Use recycled materials and Crayola products such as Model Magic to create a 3-D representation of this character large enough to post at the main doors of the school to alert all visitors to student food drive efforts.
• With the assistance of the school's music teacher and in small groups, students compose an original song, music and lyrics, to accompany their life-size food drive character. Students audio-record the song and attach it to a school computer or other recording device, such as an iPod. Locate the recording device near the character and have the original song sung on command when someone activates the recording device.
• Students can investigate the three pillars of food security which are availability, accessibility, and best use of food. What do these mean to address world hunger?
• Feeding America, formerly America's Second Harvest - The Nation's Food Bank Network, is the nation's largest charitable hunger-relief organization consisting of a network of more than 200 Member food banks and food-rescue organizations serving all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Students research the history of this organization and report on it using an electronic format.