Each student searches through magazines for pictures of various fast-food items and pastes them onto a large piece of paper. If items are unavailable, students must sketch the items they wish to include. In lieu of including just images, students may use letters found in the magazines or in newspapers to spell out various fast food items often found on drive-through menu boards.
Third-graders can pair their existing knowledge about where food comes from and create a display of fast food from its original form. A fried-chicken sandwich may be artistically represented by a vat of oil drawn next to a chicken while a hamburger may be sketched as a cow in the center of a wheat field with tomato plants, lettuce heads and a few onion plants nestled within the wheat used to make the roll.
Using modeling clay that can be painted or colored modeling clay, students mold the substance into an exact and to-scale replica of fast food items. They may make a taco with meat, diced tomatoes, lettuce and shredded cheddar cheese from the clay and allow the completed form to harden. The sculpting clay may be painted as a true-to-life representation but the colored clay should harden with its existing colors.
Instruct students to create abstract art representing their favorite fast-food items. The items do not have to look exactly like the food but the effort to create them must be present. For example, in depicting French fries, a third-grader may use a paintbrush to apply yellow paint across the canvas in short strokes, appearing as fries to the artist but perhaps not to the viewer.