Fresh Tools for Family Studies: New Resources for your FS Classroom!| Artwork

What the Family Studies?

Welcome to our What the Family Studies? podcast, here to help family studies educators create engaging and valuable learning experiences for their students that will last a lifetime. We will interview those who are passionate about family studies education. Some weeks we will interview a current teacher or professional working in the field who will share their real experiences, insights, and strategies for successful delivery of family studies curriculum. We also want to focus some of our time on your wellness. The last couple of years have been so stressful and your wellness is so important. While we are based in Ontario, we are sure that our podcast will prove helpful and entertaining to teachers in other places too.

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What the Family Studies?

Fresh Tools for Family Studies: New Resources for your FS Classroom!|

October 04, 2025 • OFSHEEA

Hungry for resources that actually work with real students, real schedules, and real constraints? We’re kicking off a new season by opening the door to a redesigned OFSHEEA website and five major projects built to make Family Studies more inclusive, practical, and engaging. With co-hosts Catherine and Katie and board members Carrie, Michelyn, and Corrine, we explore new course plans, fresh assessment approaches, and mini-units that meet learners where they live—at home, at work, and around the table.

We start with the website overhaul: cleaner navigation, aligned member resources, and a steady pipeline for teacher-created materials. Then we dive into the Grade 11 Food & Culture plan, reframed around storytelling instead of a “world tour of cuisines.” Safety and international kitchen norms lead into appreciating culture without appropriation, tracing cuisines through trade and migration, exploring global healthy eating patterns and staple foods, and closing with etiquette, celebrations, and Canadian foodways. The culminating task invites students to craft their personal food story, connecting identity to practice.

Next up is a full Grade 9/10 Food & Nutrition roadmap that respects timetable churn, foregrounds community building and inquiry skills, and carefully addresses body image with media literacy and harm reduction. We also unveil a renewed Grade 11 Raising Healthy Children plan organized into five units from readiness and birth to development and today’s family challenges, with clear guidance for sensitive topics and ideas on how to engage students in this important learning.

Finally, we spotlight financial literacy mini-units designed for Family Studies’ unique strength: money is relational. From smart teen shopping in Grade 10 Clothing and meal planning in HFN to running a childcare centre in HPW/HPD, a family finance simulation in HIP40 Personal Life Management, and data-driven choices in HHS4U, each unit is hands-on, culturally responsive, and classroom-ready.

Preview free course maps and unlock full handouts and tasks at https://ofsheea.education/free-resources/ Be sure to become a member to get access to these time saving resources at https://ofsheea.education/forms/?classfilter=3 If the episode sparks ideas, subscribe, leave a review, and share the resource you’re most excited to try—what will you teach first?

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What the Family Studies?