MA CURRICULUM FRAMEWORKS
To experience and understand the challenges and rewards of gathering food from the environment
What are the challenges of foraging?
What are the benefits of foraging for food?
What was life like for hunter-gatherer societies?
Wild edibles guide, Clipboards, Baskets/cups for collecting
Find sites of multiple wild edibles and create a handout with pictures and information, so students can follow along and write notes on each edible.
Introduction (5-10 minutes)
Gauge student’s understanding of the concept of nomadism or forage-dependent living
- How did humans survive during the Paleolithic period? They hunted for animals, gathered plants and fruits, etc. Obtaining food was the focus of daily life.
- Today we are going to place ourselves back in this hunter-gatherer time, as gatherers, and we will try our hands at “foraging” today.
Has anyone ever heard the words, “native plant,” “wild edibles” or “foraging”?
What does it mean? What’s an example of a food that you might forage around our area?
We are going to go on a foraging walk today and we will taste different wild edibles:
- We will be ignoring anything non-native to our region
- We will be relying on the plant knowledge of your mentor, me, as new gatherers would be before tasting and collecting any plants
- We will write tasting notes and notes about finding the plant (is it difficult to identify? It is difficult to harvest an abundance of it?)
- Do not eat anything unless you have my permission! We need to be sure that it is one of our wild edibles and safe to taste
Activity (25-35 minutes)
Walk with the group to the first wild edible site, asking them to name any plant they’re familiar with on the way
- Here is our first wild edible – identify the plant
- Demonstrate how to harvest responsibly
- Model tasting a small amount of the plant, and give specific instructions on how and where to spit out the sample if they don’t like it
- Share and write down notes on taste, difficulty to identify, and difficulty to harvest
- Move on to our next wild edible – as you go along, ask students to recognize the wild edibles they’ve already tasted along the way (they’ll notice that much of what’s around them is edible!) Wrap up (5 minutes)
Congrats on gathering for the last 25-35 minutes, let’s hear some feedback on the experience:
- Q – What would have been some of the benefits of foraging for food?
- Q – What are some of the challenges of foraging for food?
- Q – When we consider the environmental impact of humans, what level of impact would a hunter-gatherer society have had?
- Q- What level of impact do we have today because of how we get our food?
- Q – Do you wish we still lived in a time when you could gather or hunt all day? You can still practice foraging and hunting with a knowledgeable mentor!
FOLLOW UP & EXTENSIONS
See foraging worksheet example for available wild edibles in October on Martha’s Vineyard, MA