Activity Introduction
Quick summary:
The World Health Organisation recommends a healthy diet containing only six teaspoons of sugar per day. Yet on average Australians consume 14-16 teaspoons of sugar per day!
Of course, no one’s taking a teaspoon to a packet and eating those granules raw (at least we hope not!), so where is all that sugar hiding?
This lesson helps young students visualise how much sugar they’re consuming, and reveals just how much sugar can hide by dissolving in a single glass of water.
Students will…
- … understand how foods and drink contain a lot of hidden sugar.
- … understand the large quantity of sugar in our daily intake.
- … understand how to find and interpret nutrition labels on food packaging.
- Topic: Oral Health.
- This lesson is part of the wider unit of work SugarByHalf – Guardians of the Gums – Early Learning to Year 2.
- Time required: 45 mins.
- Level of teacher scaffolding: High – conduct the experiment and facilitate understanding of high level concepts.
- Keywords: teeth, brushing, toothpaste, oral health, dental hygiene, habits, gums, sugar, food, packaging, dissolve, hypothesis.
To view our Australian Curriculum alignment click here.
Cool Australia’s curriculum team continually reviews and refines our resources to be in line with changes to the Australian Curriculum.
- Device capable of presenting a video to the class.
- Kitchen scales.
- Packet of sugar (or substitute with sand).
- Plates x 3.
- Teaspoon or teaspoon measurement.
- The Sneaky Sugar Cube story – you can read the book yourself or watch a video of it being read here.
- Various food packaging such as:
- Bottle of fruit juice.
- Cake box.
- Can of soft drink.
- Chocolate bar wrapper.
- Any other alternatives you have on hand.
These lessons were developed in partnership with SugarByHalf and the Australian Dental Association. Guardians of the Gums was written by Bee Healthy Stories; if you would like to see more of their stories, head to beehealthystories.com.au.
Teacher Preparation