Farming in the City -- Issue 27 -- July 8, 2008

This week's standards:
Students understand optimal nutrition and wellness across the life span. (Family and Consumer Science) Students understand the characteristics and life cycles of organisms. (Science: Life Science)

Activities:
1. Draw a picture of a dinner plate. Cut out pictures of your favorite fruits and vegetables from the newspaper and paste them on your plate. Write a sentence about your favorite fresh foods.

2. Draw a line down the center of a piece of paper to create two columns. Label one column "Fresh Fruits" and the second "Fresh Vegetables." Now look through grocery ads to find fruits and vegetables. List them in the correct column.

3. With a friend, look through the newspaper ads for fresh fruits and vegetables. Circle with a green marker the foods that could be grown in your community. Circle the foods that could not be grown in your community with a red marker. Did you have more green or red circles?

4. Look through newspaper ads to find equipment you could use to (a) prepare land for an urban garden, (b) water and fertilize plants in the garden, (c) harvest and collect the plants, and (d) carry your fruits/vegetables to market.

5. Use resource books and the Internet to learn more about the food crops that are grown in your community or state. Use these questions to guide your research: Which crops ­ fruits, vegetables or grains ­ are grown in your state? How many crops are produced each year? To what other regions or countries are the products exported? How do geography and weather determine which food crops are easy to grow in your state? Write a paragraph describing your findings.

(standards by Dr. Sherrye D. Garrett, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi)