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Agriculture Helping you every day

AgMag Jr. Fall 2017-2019 Lesson & Activity Ideas

Lesson Ideas

Source Search

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."

A Day Without Agriculture

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.

Agriculture Pays

Students will recognize that agricultural careers are interconnected and that agriculture influences many parts of their daily lives.

My Farm Web

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.

Minnesota Apple Pie

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.

Journey Around Minnesota

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.

Pizza Time

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


AgK - Plant Animal or Both
grk-01-matchingstartend.jpg
grk-02-aginschool.jpg
grk-03-agincommunity.jpg
agmag1-findit-gamebutton.jpg
agmag1-pizzapicks-gamebutton.jpg
gr1-plantoranimal.jpg
gr1-birdormammal.jpg
gr2-guessplantpart.jpg
gr2-nseorw.jpg
pizza-picks-gr2.jpg
game-whydofarmersdo.k.jpg
game-whatsailswhere.k.jpg
ag-system-matching.k.jpg
world-population-graphing.k.jpg
potato-math.k.jpg
u-s-map-regions.k.jpg
word-find.k.jpg
what-grows-where-k.jpg
game-acresofpizza.jpg
game-crosswordnaturalresources.jpg
game-careersintheagsystem.jpg