Little D's Nutrition Expedition®

Program Objectives

Nutrition Objectives
The Activity Outcomes in this unit contribute to four broader Health and/or Nutrition Standards. The activities and educational games in which these Standards are addressed are in parentheses following each Standard.

• Classify foods according to the Five Food Groups (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, Quintricious!™, Little D's Tasty Tunes®, Get Me to the Banquet on Time!™, Little D's Picnic Adventure!™)
• Recognize that food is needed for good health, growth, and development (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, Little D's Tasty Tunes®, Get Me to the Banquet on Time!™)
• Describe food in a balanced diet (7, 10)
• Plan healthy meals and snacks (9, 10)

Language Arts Connections
Little D's Nutrition Expedition was designed to support and coordinate with your existing language arts programs. The Cross-Curricular Outcomes include reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills appropriate for second-grade students. The language arts skills that are reinforced in this program (and the activities and games in which they are found) include:

Reading

• Use information in text to make predictions (1)
• Identify and compare characters in a story (1)
• Read fictional material for a specific purpose (2)
• Use phonemic awareness to identify rhyming words (5)
• Make predictions before reading and relate to personal experience (8)
• Use information in text to explore cause and effect (8)
• Identify/compare character's attributes across stories (10)
• Follow written directions to perform a task (Little D's Picnic Adventure!™)

Writing

• Identify adjectives (4)
• Use appropriate pre-writing strategies to generate and organize ideas with teacher assistance (5, 6)
• Experiment with different forms of writing, including poetry and riddles (5, 6)
• Demonstrate knowledge of nouns, adjectives and verbs (7)

Listening

• Listen in order to respond appropriately through movements (1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10)
• Complete a task for which two or more steps are given orally (2, Little D's Tasty Tunes®)

Speaking

• Discuss prior knowledge and relate it to text before reading (9)

Other Cross-Curricular Connections
In addition to language arts, Little D's Nutrition Expedition® and Little D's Interactive Nutrition Games include activities that support other areas of your curriculum:

Mathematics

• Solve simple problems using money (6)
• Use spatial reasoning to plan and navigate a path (Get Me to the Banquet on Time!™)
• Sort and classify items according to common attributes (Little D's Picnic Adventure!™)

Science

• Explain the function of bones and teeth (2)
• Classify foods into plant or animal sources (3)

Social Studies

• Understand how milk is produced on a farm (2)

Music

• Echo short rhythms and melodic patterns (Little D's Tasty Tunes®)

Cognitive Skills

• Practice auditory and visual sequential memory skills (Little D's Tasty Tunes®)
• Improve visual attention skills (Get Me to the Banquet on Time!™)

Fine Motor Skills

• Use eye-hand coordination to group items with similar attributes (Quintricious!™)
• Practice analysis and categorization skills to improve automaticity and response time (Quintricious!™)

Little D's Nutrition Expedition® Interactive Nutrition Games
Fun and colorful, the interactive games in NutritionExplorations.org's Kids section review the nutrition content and skills taught in Little D's Nutrition Expedition® through puzzles, a trip through the countryside, coordination challenges, and a mysterious maze.

The games are playable even if students have not yet completed all 10 classroom lessons. Students who have mastered the activities' nutrition objectives are likely to do better in the games. For students who have not yet mastered the concepts, each game is teaching tool and an opportunity to practice what they learn in class.