Where does the oil hide?

You need:

  • Big and green olives (fresh or into oil)
  • A mortar and a pestle
  • A lens

Cut to half an olive and with a lens observe the pulp.

What have you observed?

______

The oil is found among those small lines that you see, or in big round cells called "otricello"

You crush in the mortar some olives. Oil is extracted from the liquid that it goes out from there, full of bits of olive.


Which is the olive?

You need

  • more types of fruits and seeds

Among the seeds and the fruits that are on the table, recognize the fruit from which the oil is taken out.

On your sheet of paper write its name and draw it.


Which is the olive tree?

You need

  • Some branches of different trees

Observe with attention the branches and recognize which the olive

tree is.

Draw it on your sheet of paper

The oil floats

You need

  • 2 transparent basins
  • water
  • a dropper
  • some liquids among which olive oil
  • a whisk

Put some drops of wine, juice of lemon, vinegar, coke in the water.

You can observe:

they float
they mix with the water
they remain separate from the water

Now, you put some drops of oil into the water.

You can observe:

it floats
it doesn't float

Why it does float?

You have not mixed well
The oil is lighter than the water

You have discovered that the oil doesn't mix it with water, according to you, the oil could serve

To protect from the water
To protect from the rust

Do you know some other use of oil?

The smell’s memory

You need:

  • 6-7 small non transparent containers
  • spices and tastes from the characteristic odour (onion, garlic, lavender, oil of olive, coffee, pepper,…)

In which jar does the oil of olive hide? Number _____

What is there in the other jars?

N. 1 ______

N. 2 ______

N. 3 ______

N. 4 ______

N. 5 ______

N. 6 ______

The colour of food

You need:

 Felt-tip pens, paper dishes, dry pasta of different types

Every group has to create, with these materials a good and a bad dish. Pasta can be coloured with felt-tip pens or with tempera paintings and glued to the dish with a liquid glue

The Mediterranean diet has the colours of “Pizza Margherita”:

 Green as the leaves of basil

 White as pasta and cheese

 Red as tomato

 Colouring and gluing the pasta to the dish of paper, you have to create a good dish and bad one

 Compare the dishes created by the other groups

 Good dishes have similar colours?

 And bad ones?

 Which are the colours of the good dishes?

 And of the bad ones?

The legend of the olive tree

You need:

  • some water, salt, a branch of olive tree and a fork for every group of six.

Using all the elements in the box you have to try to invent a brief sketch that tells the origin of the olive tree.

Every small group will represent the sketch in front of the other groups .

Only after having assisted to all the representations you can read on the back of the red cardboard the legend of the Greek origin of the olive tree.

How oil and olive are?

Write on your sheet of paper at least five different types of oil used in the kitchen.

Oil is produced only with olives?

Answer on your sheet.

Observe an olive, which adjectives could you use to describing it?

Use of oil - The oil as natural medicament

Phase 1 (Interviews)

Ask to the people that you know (grandparent, parents, neighbours) the following questionnaire.

  • Name and last name
  • Age
  • Place of origin
  • How do you use oil today?
  • How did you use it once?
  • Have you always used oil only to eat, to fry

or to season?

  • Have you also used oil for other things? Which?

Phase 2 (After a week to allow the realization of the interviews)

You need:

  • a white poster and some felt-tip pens

You pick up all the interviews and you bring the data on the white poster underlining the different uses of the oil.

In which regions of the Mediterranean area we can find the olive tree?

With the help of Internet seek the places in which the olive tree is cultivated.

List the places and individualize them in a map that you have available.

Write the name of the regions that you have individualized and explain why, according to you, the olive tree grows really in that territories.

The olive tree: history and legend

The most famous myth about the olive tree was the subject of a sculpture by Fidia at the Parthenon in ancient Athens.

When Athena, goddess of wisdom, and Poseidon, god of the sea, were in dispute for control of Attica, Zeus decided to award victory to whichever one offered the best gift. Poseidon made a horse appear by striking his trident. However Athena used her lance to bring forth the appearance of the first olive tree, and was adjudged the winner.