Find resources featuring Song Bank songs 
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Food
A topic-based plan by Andy Brooke, offering six weeks of activities across the KS2 curriculum to integrate Song Bank songs with everyday classroom delivery.
Food is a deliciously fun topic, with much scope for appetizing cross-curricular work and scrumptious whole-school events.
Celebrating food
RE, Geography, Science
Listen to and join in with Cauliflowers fluffy. Brainstorm the word ‘harvest’ – what is it, and what does it signify? Given that Harvest festivals celebrate gathering crops (and other food sources), why do children think that it is celebrated at different times around the world? When is Harvest celebrated in Britain? Notice that celebrations of food production do not always come at the end of the season – sing Now is the month of maying, which marks the birth of new life in spring.
Listen to Water Song, which celebrates the Jewish Festival. Ask children to do their own research on Harvest festivals around the world – www.harvestfestivals.net is a useful starting point. As well as finding out more about Sukkot, children could also focus on, for example, Pongal and Holi in India, and Thanksgiving in America.
Ask children to make an interactive food display. One section might be designed to allow users to sort foods into food groups (carbohydrates, protein, etc.). Use the song Easy peasy harvest! to stimulate ideas. Another section might be aimed at matching countries to national dishes. Sing The roast beef of England and discuss with children whether they think roast beef is the British national dish today, or might it be fish and chips, or chicken tikka masala?
Sighted people acquire most of their learning through vision. In order for visually-impaired children to access the curriculum, we must build multi-sensory activities into the learning opportunities on offer. Ask children to identify and sort food into groups using smell, taste or touch, or by describing its appearance to each other.
Fun with food
English, Music, Maths
Sing the light-hearted song, Barbecue Blues, as a light-hearted starting point. Children should pick up this song fairly quickly – the pattern is very repetitive and therefore predictable, which is all part of the fun. Re-cap the lyrics and all the things which went wrong. Can the children add any disasters of their own? As well as the rain, what other weather conditions might they encounter – fog, thunder, hail? Ask the children in groups to write and perform their own verses for one or more days of the week.
Chocolate is great, not only to eat, but as a launch pad for work in a variety of areas. For example, it is an effective vehicle – and motivator – for number work. Sing Chocoholics, which again has an easy-to-learn pattern. Through learning the song, children investigate the number 24 and different divisors, including those which give remainders. This could be extended to focus on inverse operations (eg. 3 × 4 = 12, 12 ÷ 4 = 3). Bars of chocolate could also be used to look at fractions, including equivalent fractions, and arrays (eg. 6 × 3 = 18). The chocolate could be real but, to avoid mess, work with cardboard substitutes or simple templates, the squares of which can simply be shaded – especially if good work and effort are rewarded with a square of real chocolate!
Food responsibilities
Geography, Citizenship, English, Music
Read through and discuss the lyrics of Fairtrade song. Brainstorm what the children already know about fairtrade. What is it all about? Who stands to benefit from it? This links to QCA Citizenship unit 05: Living in a diverse world. Visit the CAFOD (Catholic Agency For Overseas Development) website and follow the links to the fairtrade pages, which have plenty of resources and information about fairtrade
The excellent Banana Split game traces the journey of the banana before it reaches the consumer and invites children, in role as plantation worker, plantation owner, shipper and supermarket etc., to negotiate a fee taken from the retail price. This promotes discussion – or children could hold a structured debate – about what is ‘fair’ in ‘trade’. The interactive Kidz Zone pages contain a bank of further well-written materials, including games, real life stories and a photo gallery. For a further superb wealth of resources, have a look at the Fairtrade Foundation and the Traidcraft websites. Why not get the whole school involved in the fairtrade by holding a fairtrade day, including assembly items from all classes, and a fairtrade school dinner?
Sing through the Fairtrade song in unison (the children may already know the melody, which is from I love the flowers – if so, use this song as a starting point). Once it has become established, try to sing in parts, pointing to groups of children when it is their turn to sing. If children are not used to singing in parts, it will help to divide groups physically as well as musically, so they can concentrate more easily on their own part; as they become more secure, bring them together again to develop ensemble skills. It might also be useful to have an adult helper, or a child who is a strong singer, to make sure that the second group do not drift onto the tune of the first part. Begin in two parts and then divided into three and four parts.
Other ‘Food’ songs in the Song Bank include:
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