Great Site About Gardening

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/kindergarden/kinder.htm

Indoor Citrus Plants That Kids Can Grow

http://www.gardenguides.com/84300-indoor-citrus-plants-kids-can-grow.html

http://www.willisorchards.com/category/Fruit+Trees?gclid=CPPp4b3K_58CFctY2godIScmkA    Order a tree

Teaching students about weather, climate, meteorology, and growing zones is a very authentic means of teaching when educating them about about planting.

Does Chocolate Grow On Trees?

http://www.fieldmuseum.org/Chocolate/kids_facts.html

One fun book I like to read to students is "Monroe's Island", a story about where a child's imagination takes him far away. He and his imagination go to a place where chocolate chip cookies grow on trees.  I bring along cookies to tie into the lesson, telling the children I picked them off the chocolate chip cookie tree in my backyard.  When we sort it out, we discuss that I really don't have a chocolate chip cookie tree, but chocolate really grow on trees.  This is another great opportunity to discuss where the other ingredients come from.

Careers ... and More In Ag

 http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/kids/fair/ideas.htm  ~ Agricultural Ideas for Science Fair Projects
http://www.bls.gov/k12/nature05.htm  ~ Agricultural Food Scientists
http://www.agclassroom.org/webquest/index.htm  ~ Webquests
http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/Science_and_Technology/BotanyandHorticulture_Science.htm ~ Botany and Horticulture
http://gardens.si.edu/horticulture/res_ed/fctsht/fct_sht.htm ~ Plant fact sheet
http://www.spaceag.org/ ~ Space agriculture in the classroom
http://www.biology4kids.com/files/plants_main.html ~ Plant basics

Mooing Matilda Helps Children Decode Words

As part of my "Little Bag of Tricks" you'll my puppets that assist me when teaching different reading strategies. A different puppet is used to teach each strategy.

Clarence The Clown: this puppet that reminds students to "look for clues".  (context clues)      Sleeping Sally, "sounds out words and sounds", Frances The Frog "skips the hard words and then hops back", Chunky the Monkey "looks for chunks in the words", Ebenezer Smelly is the skunk who suggests to ask a smelly friend like a mom, or a teacher, or a classmate for help, or look in a smelly dictionary....

but,              Mooing Matila is our farm friend who likes words that sounds the same (word families) like hat, rat, and cat, and how, now, and cow.   A song called "Friends Who Help Me Read"  assists us as we tie in the auditory with the visual aspects of the puppets to meet different learning styles of different students.

When assisting students read, they may know how to say day...which will help them as they remember "Mooing Matilda" says..."If you know how to read day, then you can read play, and stay, and way, and tray, and stray, etc...

The Plant Escape

Find clues and solve problems in the world of plants.

http://urbanext.illinois.edu/gpe/gpe.html

How Does Pizza Grow

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/KidsFarm/PizzaGarden/

Have you ever wondered where all the different parts of a pizza come from? They all come from the ground!

Farm to School Programs

http://www.betterschoolfood.org/what_you_can_do/farm_to_school.cfm

Kid's Zone: Activities for Teachers and Students

http://www.agclassroom.org/kids/farm.htm

http://www.agclassroom.org/kids/index.htm

Farms, Food, and Fun

http://www.farmsfoodfun.com/Default.aspx

Learn great things while chewing on something from the farm!

Music In The Ag Classroom

Are you interested in using brain-based learning in your classroom.  Differentiated education is the key to success for so many students, but it's the key to having fun and retaining information in our class.  Our classroom uses music to learn concepts in all different curriculum areas. We learn and kinds of writing and grammar tricks with songs. We sing about the Titanic, The Dirty Thirties, and King Tut.   In science we sing to learn about the planets, oceans, cells, bones, etc... Math is great. Because of our songs, students are able to learn more difficult concepts with ease and greater retension. We sing about place value, adding and multiplying fractions, decimals, etc...The students love it and there is research to back up the millions of reason why you should add music in your teaching.

Music in The Ag Classroom is a cultimation of nearly 100 songs that we sing about agriculture and related subjects.  We sing about where food comes from, farming, eating healthy foods, dirt, and planting gardens.  We sing about bugs and where crops grow.  We sing about farms on a mountain side and we sing about the watercycle.   If you're in Baltimore, Maryland in June of 2010, stop by the national conference "Agriculture In the Classroom" and join us for a song.

Remember, when a child is singing words off a paper, they are reading...this is an awesome way to ignite students' reading and writing skills.

"Be Healthy ~ Stay Healthy Day" Set

Our date is set!  Our school will be holding a "Be Healthy~Stay Healthy Day" will be having seminars and activities for all students preschool through fifth grade this spring.  Students will be learning to read labels, participate in activities, and learn about making healthy choices in the future regarding physical activities and eating healthy.  Our healthy food booth is sure to a great hit! Yum!  Lots of fruits and vegetables will be here to sample.

Students Publish "AG" Books

Our class is all excited about "ag".   We have written and illustrated ag books, and we've had them published. (hard covers, author's name on the spine, and keepsakes we'll enjoy for years)    We wrote about so many different topics. Natasha wrote about farms, Isaac and Joe M. wrote about bugs.  Brayden and Joe B. wrote about plants.   Mackenzie, Haley, and Isabel wrote about the food pyramid.  Daniel's book is about the trials and tribulations in agriculture.  August wrote about 'the dirty thirties' and how agriculture effected their lives for ten years.  

These books are beautiful hard cover books and each student in our third grade -fifth grade class gets the first copy at NO COST to them.   This was our first year participating in this wonderful writing project.  email me for more information at www.musicmovesmyclassroom@yahoo.com

American Farm

http://www.myamericanfarm.org/

Great concepts to learn in these wonderful areas:   math, science, language arts, and social studies... while learning about the American farms.