AgMag Jr. Fall 2017-2019 Lesson & Activity Ideas
Lesson Ideas
In this lesson students will learn that agriculture provides nearly all of the products we rely on in any given day by participating in a relay where they match an everyday item with its "source."
Students learn about the wide scope of agriculture, explore the variety of agricultural products in their daily lives, and discuss the difference between needs and wants.
Students will recognize that agricultural careers are interconnected and that agriculture influences many parts of their daily lives.
Students will use visual representations to explore the role of agriculture in daily life and to understand relationships between different aspects of agriculture and the individual.
This lesson leads students to discover where apples and other agricultural crops grow in Minnesota and to identify some of the geographical conditions that had to be overcome for apples to grow here.
Through the use of relative location words and a map of Minnesota, young children begin to understand the spatial relationship of items on a map and how a map represents a place in our world.
This lesson uses pizza as a basis for learning about agriculture, geography, and mathematics.
Activity Ideas
- Challenge students to find additional items in their home and school that are connected to agriculture. Facilitate an "Ag Show and Tell" that allows students to share the items they collected and identify the agricultural connections.
- Use the pizza on page 4 of the AgMag Jr. as a starting point for discussing foods and food ingredients that are grown on farms. Create a Minnesota Grown menu that features foods and ingredients grown in our state. If space, time and funds allow create a snack using locally grown products. The Minnesota Grown website is a great resource for this activity. http://minnesotagrown.com/
- Invite local agriculturalists (farmers, ag businessmen and women, chefs ,etc.) to your classroom to discuss their connections to agriculture.
- Teacher's Grab Bag: Recipe for Corn Putty
Play with it like clay, and then watch it become liquid again.- 1 cup cornstarch
- 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon water
- food coloring
Instructions: Blend mixture with fork. It should flow when the bowl is tipped but feel solid when you touch it. If it's too thick, add a little water. If it's too runny, add a little cornstarch.
Additional MAITC Resources
- Agriculture is Everywhere Poster
- Ag Products Poster
- Where Does your Pizza Come From? Poster
- Where Does your Cheeseburger Come From? Poster
- Minnesota Agriculture: Serving Science and Society video stories
- Minnesota Farm Family videos
- Food For Thought