Restaurant Investigation

So last year we did a fun bakery investigation. This year our kids told us they wanted to learn about cooking. We brainstormed ideas and what started as a cooking investigation became a study about restaurants.

 This investigation ended up with a lot of play in centers with foods and restaurants. Here are the centers we did:
Painting with Spices
One of our art explorations was to allow the children to explore spices. We put spices, glue and water in a jar and students painted with them.

 Our Restaurant
One of the things we always do is change our dramatic play area to match our investigation. For this one we created a restaurant. We read books and watched video clips about restaurants then we made a list of everything we would need. The students made menus and we talked about jobs in the restaurant. The students decided to name our restaurant Yummy Tummy's. Students had to place their orders and the servers would write down the words from the menu and give it to the cook.

 Painting Healthy Plates
In conjunction with restaurants, Ms. West's researched with the students about the food groups and healthy plates. One of our art centers was for the students to use the My Plate model and draw/paint healthy plates.  They also worked on labeling their foods.

 Our Pizza Shop
In our clay area we combined clay and loose parts to make a pizza shop. The students named it Cheezy's Pizza Shop. They used white clay to make the dough and red clay for the sauce. Then they used loose parts to represent the toppings. They practiced counting skills by counting how many of each topping they used and writing it on the recording sheet.

 Blocks
In our block area students used the pretend food in various ways. These boys made grills to cook the food on.

 Looking Closely at Fruits and Veggies
In this area we provided real fruits and vegetables for the students to observe. They drew them after observing with magnifying glasses. Then they traced with a permanent marker and painted with watercolors.

 The best part of our restaurant investigation was our field trip to Applebee's. I contacted the gentleman in charge of the franchises in the area and he agreed to let us come to the Delco Park location. This trip was amazing. The students got to go in the different parts of the kitchen to see how everything worked. They toured the dining room area and then got to have lunch! It was a terrific experience and the staff were so wonderful with our children. They even made them little treat bags! My only wish was that we would have been able to take the trip at the beginning of the investigation vs. the end so we could have researched more after our visit.  When we got back to school we incorporated writing by making Thank You cards.

The last part of our investigation concluded with students designing their own restaurant. We talked about what they would want it to look like on the outside to attract customers and what they would need on the inside. Then they made a food menu. Last they wrote about what their restaurant looked like and what they served.

This study did not go the way we planned and we took a lot of breaks in between to do other things. The students favorite things we're working in the pizza shop and restaurant and the trip to Applebee's. This investigation did not have a huge project piece but nevertheless the students did learn about food groups and restaurants!