How to make an interactive revolutionary cookbook

This activity is suitable for students aged 6 – 14.

Climate change is a key issue for today’s society and activism against it is becoming more and more commonplace. London Connected Learning Centre worked with the Garden Museum and Year 5 students from Hill Mead Primary School to create digital cookbooks and make their contribution to a climate activism revolution.

Find out more about their project here.

This activity can be adapted for younger children by simply focusing on food that can be grown or sourced locally, or grown in a school garden.

1.     Inspiration – climate change and revolution

Teachers can use our Introducing the Age of Revolution guide, to introduce the concept of revolution.

Discuss climate change and its links to the Industrial Revolution. Students could explore objects from the Revolutionary collection such as the Boulton & Watt steam engine, The South Wales Industrial Landscape and Locomotion No. 1.

2.    Generating ideas

Discuss and make a list of all the things people are doing today to try and combat climate change. One way is to reduce our Carbon Footprint, by eating less meat and using locally-sourced ingredients, for example.

Investigate different foods that can be sourced locally. These could include:

• Fruit and vegetables
• Herbs
• Honey
• Eggs

The students from Hill Mead visited the Garden Museum. You could plan a class visit to a local allotment or students may be lucky enough to have a garden in their school grounds.

What different dishes could be made using these ingredients?

The students from Hill Mead made sandwiches from ingredients local to their school. Can students make a whole meal just from locally sourced ingredients?

Are there any ingredients they could grow themselves?

3.     Making an interactive cookbook

Students can create interactive cookbooks using text, sound, videos, images. They could document their investigations and include links to ingredients and their sources for their recipes.

Follow this step-by-step guide to creating an interactive book using Book Creator, from London Connected Learning Centre. Remember to view the Powerpoint in ‘Show’ view to see the animations embedded in some of the pages.