Fruitful Bounty

1. Students work in small groups to find out what types of food are grown and harvested locally. How are they raised? Picked? Transported to market? Find out about the origins of Thanksgiving or other fall harvest festivals celebrated in the community. What myths surround the holiday? Students prepare reports to share information orally with classmates.
2. On construction paper, use Crayola® Markers to make a simple line drawing of a cornucopia (horn of plenty, usually a woven basket). Inside and around the cornucopia, draw foods that are grown locally.
3. Cover a table top with recycled newspaper. To prepare to make the paper mosaic, students use Crayola Tempera Paints to paint several sheets of paper in the colors of the fruits and vegetables they drew. Be creative and mix colors! Think about the dappled yellows and reds of apples, the variations in green leafy vegetables, the mottled colors of weaving materials such as straw. Dry.
4. Cut the painted papers into small, uniformly-sized squares with Crayola Scissors.
5. Arrange the squares to make a paper mosaic of the cornucopia, fruits, and vegetables. Attach the pieces with a Crayola Glue Stick.

LA: Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

LA: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions with diverse partners on grade level topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.

LA: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

LA: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

LA: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience in an organized manner, using appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas or themes; speak clearly at an understandable pace.

SCI: Ask questions about the natural and human-built worlds.

SS: Explore and describe similarities and differences in the ways groups, societies, and cultures address similar human needs and concerns.

SS: Examine the interaction of human beings and their physical environment, the use of land, building of cities and ecosystem changes in selected locales and regions.

VA: Use visual structures of art to communicate ideas.

VA: Select and use subject matter, symbols, and ideas to communicate meaning.

Encourage students to expand their research of food types grown to their entire state. What foods are known to be successfully grown here? Why is that? How are these foods harvested? How long does it take to get these crops to market?

Ask a local farmer to visit the class and share his expertise with students. Prior to the meeting, students compose questions to ask. After the visit, students post learning to a class blog.

Arrange a field trip for students to a local farm during harvest season. Students take sketch pads with them and illustrate what they see during the visit. Upon returning to school, students compose a summary paragraph describing the information contained in their original illustrations.

Students investigate the history of the Thanksgiving holiday. Organize research into an electronic format in preparation for sharing findings with classmates.