This morning I gave a few youth beef presentations at East Picacho Middle School, and it was awesome! I was incredibly nervous but I’d spent a few hours putting it together so being prepared certainly helped. The kids were darling. Lots of energy! I worked with two groups of second and third graders.

(FOR LESSON PLANS FROM THE PRESENTATION BE SURE TO SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM)

I guess the thing that surprised me most were the types of questions these little ones had. Many had trouble differentiating between pork and beef. I was happy to clear up the confusion. Many students also were very interested in the drawing with the primary cuts of beef.

After introducing myself to the classroom we spoke about how their morning routine wasn’t possible without beef byproducts. There are three categories of beef byproducts – edible, inedible and medicinal. We also spoke about where they came from. There are four spots where cattle byproducts come from including bones & horns, inedible beef fat, cattle hide and organs.

Next each of the groups had a bag of byproducts to look at. I asked them to put them into two piles – what they think came from a cow and what they didn’t.

After this I admitted that they were all from cattle and they had to decide which area of the cow they came from. Lots of discussion and excitement later we went over the answers.

We finished up with questions.

And smores! Since marshmallows are beef byproducts and all;)

LESSON PLANS – ALL CLIP ART COURTESY OF GOOGLE (I don’t own it)

INSPIRED BY Facts About Beef

Thanks for reading!

Lauren