Vermicomposting in your classroom is an effective way to engage students with a wide variety of science concepts. This activity will show you how to make your own worm bin out of a recycled styrofoam cooler. Prepare the cooler ahead of time, and then have students add the bedding, worms, and vegetable scraps.
In this activity students will taste different types of chocolate to determine if price is an indicator of better taste. Chocolate is a New World food that is now beloved by cultures around the globe. Use this activity to engage students with lessons related to the Columbian Exchange, global trade, food ingredients, and food origins and processing.
Farmers work with nature. Soil nutrients, planting, weed and insect control, machinery work, crop records and harvest are things farmers can control and manage. Farmers cannot control the weather. Crops may need to be planted more than once in the spring. Most crops are ready for harvest in late summer and fall but may be wiped out by a single weather event. Play the weather harvest game to see if you will be able to bring in your crop. Order this game online from agclassroomstore.com.
In our efforts to protect the environment we sometimes confuse the terms preserve and conserve. This activity is designed to help students understand the difference between conservation, preservation, and indiscriminate use.
This engaging game introduces students to the world of beef production, from the cow-calf operation to the livestock auction, stocker ranch, and feedyard. Answering math problems is the key to progressing through the game, reinforcing key mathematics standards for third- through fifth-grade students.
Free app teaching students how foods fuel their body to create energy for their favorite activities.
In this activity, students will explore how evergreen trees grow from cone to maturity by reading Where Would I Be in an Evergreen Tree? by Jennifer Blomgren and by making a bird feeder from a pine cone.
In this activity, students will learn how to add value to Christmas trees by making scented pillows from balsam fir needles which can be used for gifts or potentially as a fundraiser for your classroom. Older students can also calculate the potential income from selling their value-added projects.
Students will learn about the history of weaving with straw and make their own woven wheat ornaments, traditionally known as "corn dollies." The art of weaving with wheat stems (straw) is practically as old as wheat itself. Traditionally, corn dollies were made using the last stems of harvested grain. Wheat was most common, but oats, rye, barley, and corn were also used. The woven ornaments with the heads of grain still on the stem were hung on inside walls where they made it safely through the winter. These sacred grains were then planted the next season to ensure the fertility of the entire crop.
In this activity students will gather, observe, and dissect flowers before collecting flowers and other plant parts to create pressed plant art. Use this activity to integrate art and science concepts while encouraging students to explore and observe plants found in their everyday surroundings.
The Space Invaders game helps students better understand the adaptive traits of plants in a new environment. The game simulates introducing new plants to 3 different ecosystems. After several rounds of play, students will see which plants survive and reproduced as well as which plants were potentially displaced.
In this activity students will create a profile for an invasive species in their area to gain an understanding of the diversity of organisms that can become invasive, where to go for trusted information, how humans may be involved in their introduction and spread, and what native species or resources are threatened. This activity can complement secondary level lessons on invasive species.