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Lesson Plans and Curriculum

All About Farmers’ Markets: A Teaching Guide for Classrooms, Camps, and Community Programs http://www.brainchildpress.com/Teaching1.html
Filled with activities for children in Pre-K through Second Grade, this curriculum incorporates nutrition education with language arts, social studies, science, music, physical activities, and more.  Many activities are adaptable for older children as well. A truly great resource for extending the market tour lessons, highly recommended.

Growing Food, Farm to Table, Food and Health, and  Choice, Control, & Change(Teacher’s College, Columbia University, LIFE Curricula)
http://www.tc.edu/life
These four modules for grades 4-8 are designed by Linking Food and the Environment (LiFE), a collaboration of the Science Education and Nutrition education programs at Teachers College, Columbia University. Students investigate and expand their understandings about how nature provides us with food, the link between diet and health, and the complexities of our food systems. They engage in hands-on investigations of food systems, agriculture, photosynthesis, and more. Students explore and analyze their personal food choices through scientific reasoning. All curricula are mapped to National Science Education Standards and Benchmarks for Science Literacy and include lesson plans, student activity sheets and readings.  Highly recommended.

Shelburne Farms- Project Seasons
http://www.shelburnefarms.org/prodinfo.asp?number=PS
Project Seasons is an education activities guide that contains a collection of hands-on activities for discovering the wonders of the world. Project Season is a valuable tool in cultivating an awareness and appreciation of agriculture and natural resources. Highly recommended.

The SAGE Center- Kids Cook Farm Fresh Foods
http://www.sagecenter.org/Projectareas/Ed/KC.htm
Kids Cook Farm Fresh Foods is a sustainable agriculture curriculum for grades 2 - 7 consisting of recipes, activities, and farm profiles. Highly recommended.

Garden-Based Learning Program, Department of Horticulture, Cornell University
http://www.hort.cornell.edu/gbl/toolshed/index.html
The Garden-Based Learning Program develops projects, activities, and other materials, as well as gardening content and youth development-oriented support.

New York Agriculture in the Classroom- Food, Land, and People
http://www.nyaged.org/aitc/flp.html
Food, Land & People's science and social sciences-based curriculum, Resources for Learning, currently serves Pre-K to 12th grade students throughout the United States. The curriculum consists of 55 hands-on lessons, developed and tested by more than a thousand educators. The subjects range from environmental science and stewardship to human populations and land use issues. 20 of the lessons are available in Spanish.

New York Agriculture in the Classroom- Lesson Plans
http://www.nyaged.org/aitc/
Lessons address concepts in language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies using the food and fiber system as a theme. Lessons include teacher instructions, student activities, worksheets, answer keys, puzzles, and games.

New York Agriculture in the Classroom- SOLE
http://www.nyaged.org/aitc/sole.html
SOLE stands for Science of Life Explorations through Agriculture. It is a set of lesson plans, grouped into themed units.  Each lesson ties key concepts of agriculture and natural resources into the classroom curriculum for grades four and five, and is aligned with New York State Learning Standards across subject areas.

USDA Agriculture in the Classroom
http://www.agclassroom.org/teacher/lesson.htm
A vast quantity of educational resources about agriculture for grades K-12.

California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom
http://www.cfaitc.org/LessonPlans/LessonPlans.php
Lesson plans by grade level (K-12) on various agricultural topics.

Junior Master Gardener
http://www.jmgkids.us/index.k2?did=6019&sectionID=6019
The Junior Master Gardener program engages children in novel, “hands-on” group and individual learning experiences that promote a love of gardening, develop an appreciation for the environment, and cultivate the mind.

KidsGardening.org- Pollinator Curriculum
http://www.kidsgardening.org/pollinator/curriculum/index.php
“The Nature's Partners: Pollinators, Plants, and You” curriculum is designed to educate 3rd through 6th graders about pollinators and the important role they play in providing many of the foods we eat and the plant fiber used in our clothing and household goods.  It also explores ways they can help pollinators survive and flourish by protecting and creating pollinator-friendly habitat.

Farmers’ Museum- Harvest of History
http://www.harvestofhistory.org/for_teachers.html
This curriculum consists of 16 activities in 4 modules designed for the 4th grade classroom that explores how agriculture has been, and still is, an integral part of our lives in New York State.

School Lunch Initiative- Linking Food, Health, Culture, and the Environment
http://www.schoollunchinitiative.org/resources/linking-curriculum.shtml
Created by The Center for Ecoliteracy, this downloadable visual guide explains how to connect school lunch to the curriculum, asks what influences our food choices, and explores the link between what we eat and socially and environmentally healthy communities. Exploring these relationships means looking at food “from field to table”.

California School Garden Network- Curriculum
http://www.csgn.org/page.php?id=22
Provides over one hundred garden-based lessons to create, expand, and sustain garden-based learning experiences. It offers practical ideas and resources for every level of garden-based learning from sprouting seeds to understanding the food system.

National Honey Board: The Honey Files- A Teacher’s Guide and Video
http://www.honey.com/consumers/kids/honeyfiles.asp
Designed for educators of grades 4-6, these educational materials provide information, classroom activities and reproducible worksheets about bees, honey and pollination.

New York State Apple Country http://www.nyapplecountry.com/education.htm
The Teacher Kit is applicable for all grades K-6. The kit includes a complete set of integrated classroom activities that encompass art, language, health & nutrition, science, social studies and math. Lesson plans and appropriate ready-to-photocopy worksheets are included as well as a comprehensive bibliography and other background materials.