Tic Tac Taco Salad
Mini-Lesson Ideas: Science and Math
1. EDIBLE PLANT PARTS: Tic Tac Taco Salad is made from fruits, vegetables, and grains - each of which is
a different part of a plant or tree! Match the salad ingredient with the part of the plant it comes from.
Brown Rice
Corn
Green Pepper
Cilantro
Garlic
Tomato
Black Bean
Green Onions
Kale
Leaf
Root bulb
Fruit
Seed
Leaf
Root bulb and stem
Seed
Fruit
Seed
2. COLORFUL FRUITS & VEGGIES – Vegetables and fruits come in a rainbow of different colors. But what
gives fruits and vegetables their distinct coloring? Typically color comes from three main types of
chemicals called pigments. The first is carotenoids, which give orange and yellow vegetables their
colors. The second is flavonoids, which provide blue, red and cream coloring. The third is chlorophyll,
which makes certain fruits and veggies green. Each type of pigment helps our bodies in different ways.
What colors are the corn, green pepper, cilantro, tomato, and kale in the Tic Tac Taco salad? What
types of pigments do you think are in those ingredients? Research what each of the different pigments
does for our bodies. Why do you think it’s important to eat a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables?
3. WHICH KALE? Kale comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes! Can you match the names of these kale
plants with their pictures?
Dinosaur Kale
A
Purple Kale
B
Red Russian Kale
C
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Curly Leaf Kale
D
4. HOW MUCH RICE? Let’s find out how much rice we need in order to make enough Tic Tac Taco Salad
for your class. Let’s assume there are 30 students in your class.
a) It takes 1 cup of dry rice to make 15 servings of salad. How many cups of rice will we need to
make enough Tic Tac Taco salad for your class? _____
b) Each cup of dry rice requires 2.5 cups of water to cook the rice. How much water will we need
to cook the rice for your class? ____
c) When cooked in water, one cup of dry rice yields about 3 cups of cooked rice. How many cups of
cooked rice will we have for the salad for your class? ____
Bonus: When a salad is on the menu at all of the MPS elementary schools, students eat about 5,000
servings. How many cups of uncooked rice do we need to make sure we have enough? Round the
answer to the nearest ones place.
5. ACTIVITY: Have students get into groups of 2 or 3 and handout several grains of brown rice to the
students along with small pieces of sandpaper. Ask the students what they think will happen if they sand
the brown rice. Then have the groups rub the grains of rice with the sandpaper. Have the students tell
you what happened to the outside of the rice. Explain to students that a grain of rice has three parts: the
bran layer on the outside; the starchy endosperm that provides food for the seed; and on the inside, the
embryo that grows into a baby rice plant. When we eat white rice, we are eating rice that has had the
bran layer removed. However, if we leave the bran layer on the rice, then the rice is considered a whole
grain. Whole grains are very good for us because we get many health benefits from the bran layer.
Answers:
1) Brown Rice = seed; Corn = seed; Green pepper = fruit; Cilantro = leaf; Garlic = root bulb; Tomato
= fruit; Black bean = seed; Green onion = root bulb & stem; Kale = leaf
2) Corn = yellow, carotenoids; Green pepper = green, cholophyl; Cilantro = green, cholophyl;
Tomato = red, flavonoids; Kale = green (curly leaf!), carotenoids. It’s important to eat a variety
of colorful fruits and vegetables so that we stay healthy! Each color provides a different health
benefit to the body, so we cover our bases when we eat a rainbow of fruits and veggies.
3) A = purple kale, B = dinosaur kale, C = curly leaf kale, D = red rice, E = red Russian kale
4) a) 2 cups; b) 5 cups; c) 6 cups; Bonus: 333 cups
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