Welcome back to a brand new school year! This last summer flew by and the start of the school year always seems to come too quickly. Like many families, the first week of school in our household was busy and seemingly quick. Because of this busy and overwhelming school year being thrust upon teachers and students, Minnesota Agriculture in the Classroom or MAITC is ready to connect teachers for the 2021-2022 school year. In hopes of helping them to better incorporate agriculture into their classroom, because when you think about it, agriculture is EVERYWHERE!
One of the goals as teachers who include agriculture in their classroom is to help students realize where their food comes from. Everyone eats, right? Not only is connecting the dots from field to plate important. But also getting them to ask questions about how agriculture impacts other parts of their lives.
Where Can We See the Impact of Agriculture?
After uncovering the importance of food and how agriculture provides that for the world, we need to inspect other parts of our lives. What about the fiber, fuel, and other things we get from agriculture? The leather on the football that was used in the game we went to last Friday? The soy that is used in crayons? And the cotton in our jeans? When you think about it, agriculture is truly everywhere!
That is the theme for September at MN Ag in the Classroom. So next time you take lunch count in the classroom (or sit down to eat with kids), take a few minutes to talk about where those french fries, milk or chicken strips came from. It can be traced back to a farm!
Classroom Utilization
One of my favorite lessons that helps highlight this is ‘Source Search’ from our Curriculum Matrix. There is a different version for all levels – K-12. It not only teaches students that Agriculture is EVERYWHERE, but it also is hands on and gets them up and moving in a ‘relay race’ type of activity. Try it out and share a pic of your class participating in the Source Search lesson race and we can highlight your classroom on our Facebook page!
