Breakfast Cereal: activities 7-11 years

Activities

Here is a set of activities provided to work alongside the Online Field Trip about breakfast cereal.

The intention is to inspire children to want to learn more about breakfast cereal, specifically how wheat cereal is grown and manufactured, and the journey wheat takes from the farm to the fork.


The activities can all be completed independently - you can pick and choose whichever is most appropriate or interesting for your purposes.

Use the Photo Pack and Glossary of Terms to support learning and teaching throughout.

Ensure parental/guardian permission has been sought prior to any tasting activity and that you are aware of existing food allergies and intolerances (wheat, gluten, dairy).

You may also wish to investigate other cereal crops and their respective grains that have featured in other Online Field Trips alongside breakfast cereals, e.g. rice, barley, rye, oats, corn, millet; and thus tie in with some of the other grain-based OFTs, e.g. ‘Baked Bread’ (wheat), ‘Sunny Sweetcorn’ (corn), ‘Perfect Pasta’ (wheat) and ‘Remarkable Rice’ (rice). Compare and contrast different foods made using different grains and note the texture, colour, taste, appearance.

Key words

Wheat, wheat cereal, wheat biscuit, grain, crop, kernel, wholegrain, fortified, field, farming, milling, intolerance, gluten, gluten-free, coeliac disease, fibre

What is breakfast cereal?

• Put a variety of different breakfast cereals in bowls and ask the children in pairs/groups to guess what they think each one is made from. You may wish to seek permission for the children to taste the different dry cereals. Ask them to record what they think the different ingredients could be just by looking at them and tasting them. Share findings and talk about whether they were correct, particularly in terms of grain, and generate initial discussion about what breakfast cereal is and the notion of breakfast cereal as a whole. 


• Talk about the different cereals the children have eaten before, and how they may have eaten them (with or without milk, with hot or cold water, with added fruit, or as an ingredient in cakes, smoothies, yoghurts, biscuits, cereal bars), and when they may have eaten them for breakfast, as a snack etc. 


• Have a look at some of the ingredients on the boxes together and talk in general terms about what some of them are. Compare and contrast some of the ingredients across the different cereals. You may wish to use some of the cereals afterwards as the basis of simple recipes. Alternatively, split the class into small groups or pairs, and ask each group/pair to research a given breakfast cereal on the internet, making notes as they go.

- What are the main ingredients? 


- Where is it manufactured? 


- Who produces it? 


- Which countries is it sold in?


- Analyse its nutritional value.


- What can you say about it?

• 
You may like to encourage the class to generate a set of questions to research beforehand. Share findings either in small pairs/groups or ask the children to present the information to the class in a method of their own choosing. 


• Establish that breakfast cereals are manufactured, or processed, from a range of different grains, notably wheat, oats, rice, corn and barley. Establish that these are all cereal grains and that all grains are seeds:

- Wheat is the seed of the plant with the Latin name Triticum.


- Oats are the seeds of the plant with the Latin name Avena sativa.


- Rice is the seed of the plant with the Latin name Oryza sativa. 


- Corn is the seed of the plant with the Latin name Zeamays.


- Barley is the seed of the plant with the Latin name Hordeum vulgare. 


• The grain generally forms the core part of the breakfast cereal. Explain that other ingredients are often added. Introduce the term ‘fortified’, and explain that many breakfast cereals are fortified, which means extra nutrients such as vitamins and iron have been added. Look back at the cereal boxes and see which vitamins you can find listed. You may like to ask the children to research the different vitamins and minerals and make notes on what they are used for in the body. Tie in with researching different types of cereal and their different benefits. 


• Show the children pictures of the different crops and their respective grains from the Photo Pack, and make a list of all of the different cereals you can think of based on one or more of these grains. Similarly, begin to record other foodstuffs/products made from the different grains.


A brief history of cereal

• Use the poster The serial of cereal to provide a brief outline of the history of breakfast cereal. Alternatively, ask the children to research the history of breakfast cereal for themselves and then use the poster to compare against their findings. 


• Create an interactive timeline using PowerPoint or similar. 


• Tie in with work on homophones; words that are pronounced the same but that have different meanings, e.g. cereal and serial. See who can find the most or the highest number of unusual examples. 


Wheat and wheat-based breakfast cereals 


• Show the children a variety of wheat-based breakfast cereals, e.g. wheat biscuits, malt wheat, wheat pillows, bran flakes and puffed wheat cereal. You may wish to let the children have a taste of them, either dry or in small bowls with a little milk or water. Compare and contrast the different tastes and textures. Alternatively you could show the children pictures of these different cereals, and explain that each one has been manufactured from wheat. Generate discussion about what they already know about wheat, revisiting the picture of wheat grains/crop 
from the Photo Pack. 


• Discuss the reasons some people might choose a wheat-free or gluten-free diet. Invite comments about allergies and food intolerances. 


• Investigate/revise where wheat grows. Either conduct research in pairs using the Internet or use the ‘World Map Poster – Wheat’ to locate ten of the top wheat producing countries. Provide groups of children with a blank version of the map and ask them to locate/stick on the map the countries where wheat is grown. 


• Use the Breakfast Cereals Trivia Quiz either as a way into further research about breakfast cereal, or as a means of reviewing what has been learned at the end of your work on this Online Field Trip. You may wish to provide copies of the quiz questions for the children to complete individually/in pairs or you may wish to begin by reading out each question in turn, giving the children the possible multiple choice answers. Children can then vote for the answer they think is correct by raising their hand holding up an ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’ card etc. Reveal the correct answer and talk about what has been discovered. 


• Encourage the children to look at home for other wheat-based foods and if possible, bring them into school to share with the class. 


• Be wheat cereal whizzes! Wheat cereals can be used as the basis for many recipes. Print off the accompanying certificates/stickers onto self-adhesive paper and award accordingly.



From the farm to the fork - cereal manufacture (wheat biscuits)

• Focus on the wheat biscuit. Children should watch the breakfast cereal Online Field Trip on the Eat Happy website before undertaking this activity. 


• Use the poster ‘Breakfast cereal – how a wheat biscuit is made’ to revisit the different stages in the manufacture of a wheat biscuit. You may wish to cut out the pictures and sequence together in chronological order. 


• Ask the children, in pairs, to explain the process to one another. 


• Ask the children to write an explanation of the process from the field to the fork. 


• Ask the children to design their own cereal manufacturing machines. Encourage them to be as creative as possible. 


• Get some of the children to research the manufacturing process of other cereals and present the information in as creative a way as possible. 


Breakfast around the world

• Investigate traditional breakfasts from around the world. Use the Photo Pack as a starting point. 


• Learn how to say the word ‘breakfast’ in as many different languages as possible. 


• Allocate pairs/group of children a country to research. Ask them to find out as much as they can about breakfast traditions from around the world and present the information back to the class possibly using ICT and multi media.


The importance of breakfast 


• Ask the children to put their hands up if they have breakfast EVERY day. Generate discussion about the importance of eating breakfast. It is a commonly held belief that allowing enough time to eat breakfast helps with good energy levels for the rest of day. 


• Explain the meaning of the word breakfast to the children. To ‘fast’ means to go without food – so by eating breakfast you are breaking the fast you were on whilst asleep. 


• Point out that skipping breakfast may lead to tiredness and lack of concentration. Generate discussion about what constitutes a good healthy breakfast. Refer to the Fruit and vegetables: all fruit and vegetables that are fresh, tinned, dried, frozen or in juice form are good for you. 
(Just be careful of things like tinned peaches in syrup as these are higher in sugar than those in their own juice.) 


  Starchy foods: bread (especially wholemeal), rice and cereals (especially wholegrain) that 
are lower-sugar and lower-salt. 


  Milk and dairy: cheese, low-fat yoghurt and lower-fat milk. 


  Non-dairy protein: meat, fish, eggs, beans and unsalted nuts. 


  *Information from the NHS website 


  • Therefore, suggestions for healthy breakfasts include things like: 


  Wheat/wholegrain cereals, such as wheat biscuits with milk, fruit, 
yoghurt, nuts and seeds 


  Brown toast with eggs 


  Brown toast with cheese or ham 


  Brown toast with a nut butter 


  Fruit smoothie as well as but not instead of any of the above. 


  • Look at an example of the Eat Well plate. If the children haven’t seen it before, explain that the plate includes the different sorts of foods that make up a healthy, balanced diet and that it is divided into sections to show the best proportions of each food group. Explain that cereals form part of the ‘Bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and other starchy foods’ section. 

  • Remind the children that cereals are also ‘fortified’ with added nutrients. For example, wheat biscuit cereal is a high source of the following: 

  
VitaminB3 (Niacin), required for: 
Normal psychological function, reducing tiredness and fatigue, 
for energy, 
healthy skin

  
Folate (folic acid), required for:
 Immune system
, healthy babies during pregnancy,
 helping to make blood


  Iron:
 Adds to the normal formation of red blood cells and haemoglobin, helps towards the normal function of the immune system 


  • Wheat biscuits are also low in sugar, low in fat and are a good source of fibre. Fibre is needed for the health of the digestion of food. By putting milk or yoghurt on wheat biscuits, protein and calcium are added which makes for a more balanced breakfast. 

  • Introduce/revise the concept of the ‘Traffic Light System’, whereby the shopper can tell at a glance whether the foodstuff is a healthy or healthier option. Compare and contrast different breakfast cereals according to the colour-coded nutrition labels. Remember: red = high, amber = medium and green = low. The idea is that the labels help us make healthier choices, i.e. try to eat the ‘red’ foods less often. It is also important to take note of the portion size to which the colours are referring. It is always best to check on the back of a packet the sugar/fat content per 100g.

  


  Breakfast diary
  
  Ask the children to keep a record of what they eat for breakfast over a week or fortnight. 

  Consider their choices and whether they are a balanced breakfast. Use the websites below to support your classroom discussions.