PROJECT
RESEARCH
https://www.ad.nl/koken-en-eten/de-omgang-met-ons-voedsel-is-compleet-doorgeslagen~adf1de20/?referrer=https://www.ecosia.org/
RESEARCH QUESTION: HOW CAN I EDUCATE CHILDREN AND/OR TEENAGERS ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF THEIR FOOD? WHAT WILL BE THE CONSEQUENCES BE OF THEM HAVING THIS KNOWLEDGE?
After my overall research I had a few topics in mind that I wanted to work with. I decided to go with the origin of food and how we, as humans, can get back in touch with it. As I'm in teacher training I started to think about ways to teach about food, and there are of course a million ones.
Our small but mighty land is besides America (!!!) the BIGGEST export country in all sorts of food. Just let that sink in for a moment.
Some great initiatives surrounding local food and gardens, giving transparency about food production.
Because of my work with children, which I really enjoy, I wanted to tackle them as a target group. Young children learn fairly easily and most of the time happily, especially by example. Children love animals and nature too and seem to make choices more often from the heart. I wanted to explore the ways to teach children about food and where it comes from, so they can understand how certain products, let's say chocolate, are made and what is necessary in this process. If they know where their food comes from, they can make better choices regarding the environment when they're older, by for instance shopping locally. Also they might choose healthy and fresh produce more often, because they know it's origins and why it is necessary to eat.
Interesting video's regarding the main topic of teaching children about (healthy) food and it's origins. Many children (from all ages) these days don't know where their food comes from and with exaggeration only get excited when served Mac Donalds, food wise.
My initial thought was to create an educational tool to make it fun for children to learn about food. Here you have a video about a Lego inspired toy that simulates a farm that children can play with. A great way to make them excited about this process in real life perhaps. I also included a site with education games and a fun educational video as a source of inspiration to help me in my quest to find a fun tool.
Researching the different fun ways of learning I hit the jackpot. Kwartet. I have fond memories of playing this game when I was younger and when I researched it I found out there are many different educational ones, targeting almost all topics one could imagine. I instantly got excited which is often a good sign for me, so I went with it. I started thinking about how I could create a game of Kwartet about the origin of food.
After my research I started working on visualizing my final product, which is a Kwartet game about the origin of food, which children can use to learn about this topic in a fun way. Below I have made two examples of a set of cards, one a bit more "formal and educational" and for older children perhaps and one for younger children that is a bit more playful. I immediately fell that the more playful one is more attractive to children, so I decided to work on that insight. What also came to mind during this progress is the question of what food groups I want to highlight and how in the game, as there are of course too many different sorts of food which makes it hard to highlight all of them in the game. As I was working with peanut butter as an example, I came up with the idea to make the theme of the game bread spreads. In this category you have loads of options and different kinds of products from different places, like chocolate and fruit. It's also a topic that children will recognize and understand very easily.
Mindmap about the educational tool and after choosing the Kwartet, a mindmap about the Kwartet.
A first test of visualizing the game.
Important article in my research stating the lack of knowledge from children when it comes to food and it's origin.