Homeschool History Lesson Plan ~ Making Food From the Past

As your students learn about history and home economics, a great way to combine the two is to develop a lesson plan involving cooking meals that people used to prepare for their families, school lunch meals, and for restaurant menus.

Students will learn a bit about the economics of that time and what resources were available at that time. For example, in the 1920s, during the Depression, many people had to come up with meals without using the essentials such as bread, milk or even eggs. Some of these meals that were made out of necessity have become unique meals that we still enjoy today.

Start the lesson by choosing a time period and researching menus from that era. Foodtimeline.org is a great website to start with. Prepare all of the ingredients, aid your students in cooking their meals, and get your studentts to serve it at dinner time.

After clean-up or for the next day's assignment create a worksheet identifying what historical inferences the students learned during their activity. You can also tie the time period that your students chose, with a historical event of that time and ask your students questions on why they think the food may be different from the way it is cooked and prepared today (e.g. the advancement of technology, the economy, cultural influences) to help your students better understand the objectives of the history activity.

Keep the graded worksheet in your portfolio for record keeping. For a free worksheet for this activity click here.