An introduction to the diet of the ancient Greeks by tasting!
This resource can be used at the start of a learning journey on Ancient Greece, to engage, or at the end. I have also used it the day before a ‘Fabulous Finish’ (Ancient Greek Day) where the children dressed in costumes, designed their own Greek pottery and carved in clay, held a mini Olympic games tournament and then marched into a feast, giving due honour to Zeus before eating. It worked well in this manner, because the children were already aware of the types of foods they would be sampling and why.
The resource includes:
Presentation on the diet of the Ancient Greeks.
A printable Menu - edit on the ppt to include the food you have bought
Slides to show what foods are going to be sampled
A printout where children can rate the food, based on its appearance and texture and taste etc. (Print from ppt)
A suggested follow up task - where children design their own menus, of Ancient Greek style food, using effusive persuasive language.
All the food types included, are easy to source, and I found Aldi/Lidl extremely good value for 60 pupils. Most children gagged on the anchovies, but it was part of the fun - they all loved the goats cheese/greek yoghurt squeezy honey combo (and some were eating the honey simply on its own!)
Amazing thank you! Do you have a plan for your Ancient Greek Day? That is exactly what I am looking for. Thank you
Nataliebu
2 years ago
Thank you for your review. I am sorry that I do not have a plan, but from memory the day ran something along the lines of:
Children attended in costume and had photos taken.
Activity 1: air dry clay carving - using printouts of typical patterns and ancient pots, children were given a lump of clay to form as a tile then carve into. They later painted them orange and black.
Activity 2: Cheese making - using goats milk, salt, lemon juice and ‘pop socks’ as the fine mesh to separate curds. children warmed milk in a pan etc. This was eaten at the feast. I think TAs took small groups to the kitchen to do this.
Activity 3: ppt presentation on foods and designing an Ancient Greek menu of what they would taste at the banquet.
We may have had another activity as I recall solving riddles with actual manipulatives in the playground, such as filling a container with 3l when you only have a 2l and a 5l jug, and crossing the river Styx using a classic river boat crossing riddle but that may have been a separate ‘maths’ lesson.
The afternoon was the food tasting and Olympic Games activities - everything was rotated as we had two classes.
It took a bit of organising but different adults led on different stations so it wasn’t as work heavy as it might sound.
Empty reply does not make any sense for the end user
