Let It Grow/Spring Onions

Instead of throwing away what's left of your spring onions after cooking, why not use this activity to help children to understand that vegetables from the supermarket can continue to grow, even if they are just scraps!

You will need;

• Spring onion scraps, a glass, water, and (eventually, if it goes well) some all-purpose compost.

What to do:

1. Chop an inch above the root of the spring onion, submerge the root in water in a glass jar and and leave by a window. Change the water every 2-3 days.
2. When 4-5 cm has grown (should take 1-3 weeks), put some soil in a pot and plant the onions root side in! Water every couple of days.
3. After a couple of weeks there should be enough green shoots 7-10 cm or more! Cut and use the shoots in a garnish or cooking

What a waste!

We don’t need to be ashamed of ourselves for wasting food, but it’s good to be aware of it. Imagine how much money we might save, or how we wouldn’t need to take out the bins as much, or even how much of a positive impact on the environment it might have!

You will need

• Pens/paper, activity sheet

Activity

1. Print out sheet.
2. Think about what has been thrown away in the past week and draw it in the bin!
3. Turn the page over and put it near the bin.
4. Every time you throw something away, write it on the sheet.
5. At the end of the week, compare your drawings with the items you recorded.

Discussion ideas:

• Is there less or more than you thought? How much money do you think it amounts to? What could we do instead of throwing it in the bin? What waste was avoidable and what waste wasn’t?

A Tale of Two Slices

It’s estimated that 24 million slices of bread are thrown away in the UK each day. This is equal to over a million loaves of bread being wasted in a single day! One of our aims at The Felix Project is preventing good food going to waste. This activity helps children learn how to keep food fresh and edible. The knowledge learnt can prevent waste in the long term, but in the short term, you will be wasting two slices of bread. Use bread that is already going a bit stale.

You will need:

• 2 x freezer bag/reusable bags, 2 x slice of bread, a marker pen.

Activity

1. Label freezer bags ‘dirty’ and 'clean.’
2. Take one piece of bread and hold it in your hand (do not wash hands before). Then put it on the dirty bag. Add a drop of water into the bag using a pipette or a teaspoon and zip it up.
3. Now go and wash your hands... thoroughly!
4. Take the second piece of bread, drop it in the “clean” bag and zip that up too.
5. Leave the bags on a windowsill, make your predictions about what will happen and check in on them daily.
6. After a week what do you see? What are the differences?

Spoilers: It is likely that the bread in the “dirty” bag is going to be quite to very mouldy, the bread in the “clean” bag, may also get mouldy but not as much.

It's Butter Time!

In this activity, you are going to learn how butter is made. It’s very simple, however, you may want to set up this activity for pairs/groups so that children don’t get too tired!

You will need:

• double cream, a jar with a lid, pinch of salt (if you like salted butter)

Instructions

1. Fill up the jar half full with double cream. If you want salty butter, add a pinch of salt too.
2. Shake the jar for 5-7 minutes, or until you can hear/feel that a lump has formed inside the jar.
3. Strain the solids using a fine sieve. (The liquid that separates from the solids is butter-milk and can be used in recipes that require buttermilk!).
4. Rinse with cold water and squeeze the solids into a ball or whatever shape you desire.
5. Cover and put in the fridge.

This homemade butter should be good for up to a week, enjoy on a piece of toast or however else one like's to have butter!