Author: K.Graybill

Kim Graybill is a veteran Family and Consumer Science teacher who teaches both middle and high school in Pennsylvania.

Fruit Lesson & Galette Lab

Consumption of fruit in the daily diet is important for all age groups!  What’s to love about fruit?  A lot actually!  Fruit is available in many forms from fresh to frozen to canned and even dried.  Fruit is a nutrient dense, low calorie food that can be eaten alone as a snack or incorporated into a meal or dessert.  Fruits can be eaten raw or cooked and there are so many to choose from, some more seasonal than others!  This fruit lesson focuses on the classification of fruits, how to select quality fruits and explores enzymatic browning. It also features delicious galette labs.  Galettes are unique to most students and a little different than making pies, but they are easy to make and amazingly delicious especially with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top!

Escape the Pay Check Conundrum

Back again with another breakout style review activity!  This time the escape or breakout centers around pay check deductions and math calculations.  Created because, honestly, even though teaching about pay checks is important, it can be boring!  This review jazzes things up because student teams are competing against each other as well as the clock to get to the prize box!  In the process, they are honing their math skills.  Win-win for those of us who need to incorporate core concepts into our curriculum!  The beauty of this breakout is that it can be done both with locks and boxes if you have them or digitally if your don’t!

Children & Self-Esteem

Teaching students about self-esteem is important at any age, but it’s super important to emphasize how critical it is to a child’s development. In this lesson I share some ideas and activities that help students understand what self-esteem is, the difference between positive and negative self-esteem, how it’s developed, why it’s important and who/what helps to influence it. So, read on to learn more about this lesson!

Evaluating Children’s Books

Hands down…teaching about literacy and all that it entails is one of my most favorite concepts to teach in child development!  Maybe it’s my love of reading, my love of great children’s books or my love of seeing children engaged in reading great children’s books!  Either way, it’s an engaging and fun unit to teach and share with my students.  In the past I’ve shared many posts about literacy and reading to children, but I have never shared my lesson on evaluating children’s books.  Read on to learn more about this lesson!

SKETCHNOTES: The “Magnificent 7” Baking Ingredients

After reading Tisha Richmond’s blog & book titled, “Make Learning Magical”, I wanted to give sketchnotes a try. The problem was, finding a good topic. In addition, I wanted to amp up the excitement to get my students to buy into the concept.  Since there are 7 baking ingredients, I decided to call them the “Magnificent 7” because of how well they work together, similar to the characters in the movie of the same name. The first day of sketchnotes was met with mixed reviews….some students grumbled, while others really got into it.  Later, some of the students who were a bit skeptical said they actually liked it and found it relaxing! I loved that my students bought into this concept and I have to admit they were fun to grade!

A Twisted Love Poem Activities & Updated “No One Would Tell” Resources

Ever feel like you need to breathe new life into some of your units?  That’s just how I felt with some of my dating violence activities! Not that they still weren’t great activities, I was just getting tired of using them and needed something fresher. In this post you will find a few of the new activities and resources that I created that involve a poem, a teen girl visual and an updated movie for use in this unit. So, choose one, two or all three to try out the next time you teach about dating violence!

Plant Based Proteins Part II: Seeds

If you visited the site last week, you saw that the plant based protein lesson was focused on beans and legumes. This week is a continuation of plant based proteins, concentrating on seeds!

Plant Based Proteins Part I: Beans & Legumes

I am a big fan of Michael Pollan’s work!  I especially like what he has to say about food in his documentary “In Defense of Food”.  Even if I don’t have time to show my students the documentary in its entirety, I do like to focus on certain parts of it.  One in particular are his 7 words that he uses to sum up healthy eating: “Eat foods–Not Too Much–Mostly Plants”.  It’s a great way to introduce students to different plant based foods!  Read on to learn more about how those 7 words equate to a lesson about beans and legumes.

Mindful Eating: A Talking Point Lesson & Activity

Talking point lessons may just become a reoccurring series!  I love when I stumble upon a topic that is both interesting and engaging, but doesn’t require a lot of time and effort. These types of lessons are great for sub plans, unexpected assemblies, early dismissals or weather delays that can wreak havoc on keeping classes on the same timeline. Many districts are requiring teachers to present their students with e-lessons on snow days.  What better way to do this than with a talking points lesson that you can cater and adapt to your needs!  This lesson and activity revolve around “mindful eating” because most of us often do the opposite!  So, learn more about how you and your students can become more mindful of your eating! On a side note, if you have a topic that might lend itself well to a talking points lesson and/or activity, please let me know in the comment section below and I’ll see what I can do!

A Child Called It : Teaching Activities

I have been incorporating the novel A Child Called It into my curriculum for at least 15 years. During that time, I have developed and/or accumulated many resources that reinforce the events and themes of the novel.  This unit takes me 2-3 weeks to teach, depending on the projects I choose to assign from the below list.