November 2022 | Issue #134 |
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*make sure to click "View entire message" to get access to the full newsletter!* |
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Maine Agriculture in the Classroom Grants
We are now accepting applications for
ALL CATEGORIES of grants for our December 13th deadline!
Up to $2,000!
Get your cool ag projects funded!
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The KidsGardening.org Youth Garden Grant is now open!
50 organizations will be awarded $500 in funding and a collection of gardening supplies for their youth garden program.
The deadline for application submission is Friday, December 2, 2022.
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Green Our Planet is currently offering grants for their Next Generation Science Standards-aligned school Hydroponics and GardenConnect programs this fall.
Both of these grant opportunities are open to public, private, and charter schools located in the United States.
Green Our Planet is accepting applications on a rolling basis until all grants are awarded.
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Darcy Johnston, educator in RSU 3, received a MAITC scholarship and attended the National Agriculture in the Classroom conference in Saratoga Springs, NY this past June.
Here's an update from Darcy:
"I gathered myriad ideas and resources from the National Agriculture in the Classroom conference in Saratoga Springs this summer! Since the start of this school year, I've used a few of the resources already, including the Adopt-a-Cow program and some phonological awareness activities for early elementary students. The Adopt-a-Cow program was new to me, but it's already proven popular amongst the students! We met our calf, Glow, just last week. We're excited to follow her development throughout the year and learn more about dairy farming in the process. We did a Cow Relay activity (developed by Shelburne Farms in Vermont) to learn more about what cows need and produce, watched a couple of videos on caring for calves and cows from Discover Dairy, and did some of the supplemental worksheets from the Adopt-a-Cow lessons. This program is a great way to introduce dairy farming and the kids are so excited about "their" calf! (Above are pictures of students participating in the Cow Relay)
Another fantastic resource I scored at the conference was a bundle of phonological awareness activities with an agricultural theme developed by one state's cooperative extension. I used the activities in different centers for some of my kindergarten to second grade students. In the centers, students matched agricultural pictures with the same initial sound, identified rhyming words, and put together picture puzzles of different agricultural-related products. I'm looking forward to using other resources in this bundle later this year. Most notably, there are some phoneme segmentation activities that I look forward to using with my students.
These are just a couple of the activities I've already used with my students, and I'm looking forward to doing other ones as the year progresses. Thanks so much for the opportunity to go to the conference! It was quality professional development and I brought home so many wonderful ideas and resources!"
WOW! We hope you find as much inspiration and encouragement from Darcy's update as we did! Keep up the great work in RSU 3!
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Northeast Livestock Expo Kids Day |
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NELE Kids Day will be BACK for 2023 at the Windsor Fairgrounds on Thursday, May 18th! This is a full day field trip opportunity for Grade K-6 students! Up to 30 different exhibits to visit with agricultural animals, insects, history, and more!
Bus transportation reimbursements will be available for schools within a 60 mile radius of Windsor Fairgrounds on a first-come, first-serve basis. Registration is MANDATORY!
Application materials will be emailed this month to school contacts that have previously attended. If the contact has changed at your school, or your school has not attended in the past but is interested for more information, contact us at maitc@maine.gov.
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Slicing Up Earth's Land Resources |
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Have you ever used an apple to represent the earth and demonstrate how limited our land and soil resources are to produce food? This is a classic activity using calculations dating back to at least 1989. Big news! Following extensive research, Population Education has updated the calculations. Find all new lesson plans and instructional resources on the Curriculum Matrix to use this activity in your classroom.
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Summer Teacher's Institute 2023 |
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Save the Date!!!
Maine Agriculture in the Classroom
Summer Teacher's Institute will be held
July 31 - August 4, 2023
at University of Maine at Presque Isle
26 Contact Hours or 2.6 CEU’s.
Stay tuned for more information and registration. Scholarships will be available!
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Maine Farm & Sea to School Network Upcoming Events |
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Sea to School in the Gulf of Maine
Thursday, November 3 2:00-3:00 PM via Zoom
Recording available to registrants
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Building Inclusive Food Education Practices
This workshop will both introduce and practice using a tool created by the MFSN Equity Committee that distills decades of educator experience into a guide for reducing unintentional harm in garden & food education. This workshop will help elevate your awareness of how to be inclusive of a diverse set of backgrounds & lived experiences in your farm to school education work.
Wednesday, November 9
3:00-5:00 PM via Zoom
This will be an interactive session with breakout rooms and will not be recorded.
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Maine Farm and Sea to School Institute |
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Planning for the Second Annual Maine Farm and Sea to School Institute is happening! Check out this new video highlighting the Institute's launch!
For more information or if your school or district is thinking about applying for a team to attend, visit their website. Applications for the next institute cohort will open this winter.
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Professional Development Opportunity |
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Window to the Woods
A Forest-based Webinar Series for Educators
Earn up to 9 contact hours for this 6-part series focused on incorporating Maine's forests into the classroom with Maine TREE and Maine Project Learning Tree. We'll discuss different forestry concepts and multi-disciplinary curriculum with experts in the field and seasoned classroom educators who have introduced the topics with their students. Each participant will receive an access code for Project Learning Tree's standards-aligned environmental education curriculum guide.
Cost: FREE
Remaining Fall Schedule:
- November 15, 2022- Forest Management
- December 13, 2022 – Maine’s Wood Products
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Food and Agriculture Center for Science Education |
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Have you checked out the Food and Agriculture Center for Science Education? This resource provides learning materials that are in alignment with contemporary STEM standards; materials that spark inspiration. They are seeking learners and educators who kindle the flame of knowledge; who add ideas and draw in the like-minded to contribute to the light. Together, we can work to solve the world’s problems, and we can help cultivate the next generation of leaders that will tackle the challenges they may face in this rapidly changing world. Check it out here.
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Harvest of the Month - November is Maine Brassicas! |
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Click here for the great Harvest of the Month (HOM) materials - posters, fact sheets, recipes, social media promo, and more!
All of our HOM Resource Pages can be found on our Teach ME site under "Teaching Units"
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Teacher Resources Section |
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Cultures, Food, and Communities Around the World. Grades K-2. Grades 3-5. Students explore different cultures around the world and their unique traditions centered around food and its preparations. Students discover how food gets from the farm to the grocery store.
Wild Rice. Grades 3-5. Students explore the life cycle of wild rice, compare the steps of the traditional Native wild rice harvest with a cultivated wild rice harvest, and create their own wild rice bowls.
Enjoying the Harvest. Grades 3-5. Students identify the parts of a wheat plant and wheat kernel and investigate the process of milling wheat kernels into flour.
A Rafter of Turkeys. Grades 3-5. Students investigate the domestication and life cycle of the turkey, discover how turkeys are raised on farms, and identify turkey products.
More Than One Grain of Rice. Grades 6-8. Grades 3-5. Students investigate the cultivation and identify the parts of rice by reading One Grain of Rice by Demi and removing the hull, bran, and germ from grains of rice.
The Geography of Thanksgiving Dinner. Grades 6-8. Grades 9-12. In this lesson students will identify common Thanksgiving foods and their farm source, determine if those foods can be produced locally, and locate the common origins of their Thanksgiving day dinner.
Looking for more? Explore the Agricultural Literacy Curriculum Matrix HERE
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How Did That Get On My Thanksgiving Day Plate? Turkey, cranberries, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, butter, sweet potatoes - check out this article from the American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture to learn more about how these foods make it to your plate! The article includes links to more resources, too!
Cranberry Bounce. A great video to celebrate Thanksgiving. See an enactment of the first North American Thanksgiving at Plymouth. Watch children put on hip waders and go chest high into the bog during the fall cranberry harvest. Cranberry Bounce introduces children to the seasons on a cranberry farm. Along the way, they learn about the biology of cranberry reproduction, geography of cranberry growing areas, some cranberry recipes, and cranberry decorations.
Bread in a Bag. This activity details the instructions for making bread in a Ziploc bag. An excellent way to demonstrate bread-making and the properties of yeast within a classroom setting.
Wheat Weaving: How to Make a Corn Dolly. 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.
Ag-Bites. Ag-Bites are bite-sized ways to bring agriculture into your classroom. These one-page sheets explain how to perform hands-on learning activities with students in various grade levels (K-12).
Dirt-to-Dinner: Food Matters. The goal of Dirt-to-Dinner (D2D) is to educate the curious consumer on how food travels from the farm to our forks. Verified science is used to answer questions on our global food supply chain, sustainability in agriculture, the integrity of our food, and its nutrition. Information is focused on how and why countries are dependent on each other for a constant food supply, looks for the balance between feeding the world’s population today without compromising the environment or future generations of tomorrow, and examines the integrity of our food.
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More funding opportunities are listed from some of our friends:
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ReTreeUS plants orchards in schools and provides educational programs that empower people to be healthy environmental stewards.
Fuel Up to Play 60 offers educators a wide array of resources they can use to help students make sustainable changes in their school environment.
Agroworld is an agricultural science e-zine developed for the secondary educator.
KidsGardening has ideas about plants and gardens, teacher resources, and grant opportunities.
The Chop Chop magazine and website has easy and healthy recipes.
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This document is a compilation of agriculture related resources to be used in virtual and remote learning.
Pictures, videos, and words are hyperlinked throughout the document.
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Funding from this plate has impacted up to 200,000 students annually with lessons, materials, volunteers and teacher training. Annually up to $60K is distributed in grants to schools, FFA, 4-H and other Non-profit programs for Ag education initiatives by the Maine Agriculture in the Classroom Council.
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Donate today to The Maine Agriculture in the Classroom Association
The Non-profit, completely volunteer, portion of MAITC. These funds are used directly to support teacher scholarships and recognition, and support volunteer participation for Ag education programs. Your donation is completely tax deductible and you can make a one-time donation or a recurring monthly donation which will support the mission, "to promote the understanding of agriculture and natural resources among students, educators, and the general public." If you have any other questions or would like to join this group please contact the chairman, Maryjane Stafford. Donate Here.
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Our Mission Statement
"To promote the understanding of agriculture and natural resources among students, educators, and the general public"
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28 State House Station
Augusta, ME 04333
(207)287-5522
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