Build-a-Plate: A Hands-On MyPlate Lesson, a Free Scoring App, and Free Printables
Ask a class to show you a 3 oz serving of salmon and almost everyone builds something twice the size. Ask for a half cup of rice and you get a mound. Portion distortion is not a knowledge problem, it is a picture problem, and it does not get fixed by a number on a slide.
That is the reason we built Build-a-Plate. Students pick up a real-size serving, put it on a plate, fill the other half with whatever fruits and vegetables they actually like, and then find out how they did. The lesson lands because they built it themselves.
Watch the kit in action
Here is the unboxing, a plate built from scratch, and the free app grading it in real time.
What makes the models different
The protein and grain models are true to size. A 3 oz salmon fillet and a half cup of rice are exactly as small as they look, which is usually the surprise. The fruits and vegetables come as slices and pieces on purpose, so students fill that half the way people actually eat: a few berries, some carrot coins, a fan of banana. No two plates come out the same.
Every kit holds 19 different foods plus one teaching plate, with multiple pieces of many of the foods, so a whole class can build at once. There are four plates to choose from and your kit comes with the one you pick: MyPlate, Diabetes, or Portion. Rainbow plates ship the first half of October.
The free Build-a-Plate app
The app is free, needs no login, and works on any phone, tablet, or classroom board. Students tap the foods they used and it grades the plate: a protein, a grain, and at least two fruits or vegetables earns an A.
It also does something a poster cannot. Beans count as a vegetarian protein, so a student can build beans, rice, lettuce, and strawberries and score a perfect plate with no meat on it. Build beans and rice alone and the app asks for two fruits or vegetables, which is exactly the correction that plate needs.
The Leader Guide and Activity Book
Every kit comes with a full Leader Guide and Activity Book as a PDF, emailed at checkout. It covers the Healthy Plate Method, what is in your kit, discussion prompts, and reproducible student pages, so you are not inventing a lesson plan around a box of models. Because it is a download, you get every update we make to it at no extra cost.
Free printables for your classroom
Not ready to buy anything? Start free. Our printables page has ready-to-teach handouts for K-3, grades 4-8, high school, adults and community programs, plus Spanish-language sheets. No email required, no form to fill out. Download what you need and print it today.
Why we make these ourselves
The food models nutrition educators have been buying for thirty years were molded overseas a long time ago, and that catalog is frozen. If the piece you need was not made in 1998, it does not exist. You can usually tell by looking at it.
Every model in this kit is designed, 3D printed, and hand-finished by us, on our own printers, in our own studio. Nothing in the box is bought in and repackaged. That is why the kit already includes foods the old sets never had, like garbanzo beans and a salmon fillet. If your teaching needs something that does not exist yet, tell us and we will look at making it.
More hands-on tools that pair with it
Build-a-Plate works on its own, and it works even better next to the visuals that make the same point from another angle.
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