The Creative Process Curriculum Enrichment & Lesson Plan Ideas:
Sharing Food, Food in Art
educational posters > education resources index > lesson plans > sharing food < social studies

Eating together, sharing food is the way we learn to trust on another, to form community.

Through out history artist have illustrated how we share meals. Observing how food is shared with fellow humans will help us understand more of who we are and how our ancestors have influenced us, as well as project a possible future. Use posters and prints of people eating together to create teachable moments where ever you share meals with students.

The Assyrian name, “Ashur-bani-pal”, means “Ashur has made a son”, Ashur being an ancient Addadian sky god. The name is still popular today.

Ashurbanipal was the last great king of ancient Assyria. Because he was not the eldest son, Ashurbanipal was educated in his youth to read and write which may have contributed to his ordering the collection of all available cuneiform literature and systematization of the archived “documents” accumulated in administrative routines, at Nivevah, in other words, a library. The library preserved such epics as Gilgamesh. Being educated did not prevent Ashurbanipal from being a ruthless military leader.

Thebes was an important city in Ancient Egypt. It was located nearly 400 miles south of the Mediterranean on the east bank of the Nile. Today Thebes is thought of as the tombs and mortuary temples on the west bank of the Nile.

The marriage at Cana as related in the Gospel of John was the setting for the miracle of Jesus changing water into wine.

Today an open air feast is called a picnic.

Artist Paul Gauguin lived as the proverbial starving artist. Here, in Tahiti, he is showing a table with bananas.

Vincent van Gogh depicting the peasants he lived with at a meal of the lowly potato.

Norman Rockwell - Saying Grace

Dinner Time in the Trenches: A Happy Party at a Dug-Out During the British Advance. -

It has often been said that the British troops are the best-fed in the world. And well they deserve it! Conditions in our trenches are different from what they were at the beginning when the Germans had an overwhelming preponderance of guns and men. A British officer said to Mr. Philip Gibbs the other day: "Men who went through the misery of the old trench life for nine months of bad weather, never dry, never in physical comfort, always shelled, eating or sleeping or digging, feel that the time has come to get their own back. It is their turn, and they go out against the enemy with this thought in their brains, and it is this that gives then their dash and makes them reckless of any fire." So Prussian Guards, Bradenburgers and Bavarian know. - (Official Photo.)