Herbs Lesson Plans
Teaching your culinary arts and FACS students about herbs and spices can be a fun experience. Humans have been using herbs and spices to flavor foods, heal sicknesses, and to preserve foods for thousands of years.
Herbs and Spices Teaching Ideas
1- Ask your students what their favorite herb or spice is. You may have to suggest some to them if they are not sure. Some popular ones are cinnamon, pepper, basil, etc.
Ask students what is their favorite spice and herb. Give them some examples.
2- Teach them about the different herbs and spices. We have a PowerPoint presentation that includes the history of herbs and spices, the most popular, and uses of them.
3- Show a video! This is a great video on where different spices originate from that we like to show our students. We love incorporating history and geography into our culinary arts lessons and it gives students great background knowledge as they explore ingredients.
4- Have students investigate what is in their cupboards at home and or what is in your classroom cupboard and categorize them as an herb or a spice. *You can also set up a taste station and have students taste the different herbs and spices on individual plates and record what they think each one is. Label each herb or spice with a number.
Click the image to see the lesson!
5- Have students research an herb and a spice and create a slideshow about them. I love having students do the research and then present to the class. It gives them a break from always listening to me and they remember what they teach!
Bonus Idea: Around the holidays, FACS teacher Melissa Litherland of Fall River School District in Wisconsin had her students make a “seasons greetings” door with different herbs and spices!
More Culinary Arts Teaching Ideas
While you are teaching about herbs and spices, you might like to teach your culinary students more about the history of food and cooking. Here is our blog post all about teaching the history of food.
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