Sunday, April 3, 2011

March- Holy Canola!

March was sadly my last classroom time with the fantastic 4th graders of 2010-2011.  I told the kids that for our last meeting we were going to be learning about my favorite crop.  Apparently it was no secret as all hands went in the air and everyone said Canola!

I found an awesome activity book on www.canolainfo.org called Captain Canola.  It included various activities including a word find, crossword, and word scramble.  We discussed the growth of a canola plant from seed to rossette to bolting to flowering and podding.  We learned that many products are made from canola including Canola oil, lotions, bath oils, and newspaper ink!  We also discussed the process canola goes through in a crush plant to be separated into canola oil and livestock feed.

We then decided to have some fun with one of the products that comes from that beautiful yellow plant!  We made Playdough!  In the Captain Canola activity book there was a great recipe for dough which I am happy to provide: 1C Flour, 1C Salt, 1TBSP Canola oil, mix all together and slowly add water until the product is soft and clay like...use food coloring to color to your choice!

Here are some pictures of the very fun activity!
Mixing Flour and Salt for the 1st step of the Playdough making!

Patiently waiting for the next step!

Mixing in the food coloring and Canola oil

It turned out pretty good and was lots of fun to play with!

Very Cute Color!  Took some elbow grease but it turned into something fun!

Looks pretty gooey

The dough turned a few people's hands colors!

Saw a Very cute "Thanks Courtney" written in play dough on one of the students desks!

I had to take a picture of this!  These kids have learned so much about the agriculture industry this year and it touched my heart to see a little girl write I Love Agriculture with her play dough!

I love seeing smiles like this!


Stay Tuned!  For our Final meeting I will be hosting the group for a tour of Dakota Agronomy's Fertilizer plant and SunPrarie Grain's Seed plant and main grain driveway on Tuesday!  It should be a fantastic time!

3 comments:

  1. This is so great! Thanks for being such an outstanding advocate for agriculture!! You are an awesome agucator!

    ReplyDelete
  2. LOVE the messages to you in play-doh!!! What a GREAT activity...and now you have a new nickname...Captain Canola :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love Canola as well! I grew up in Alberta, Canada, so I saw it all the time, but now that I live in the Midwest I don't see it very often. Such a pretty crop. I am going to have to post this recipe to my blog sometime.
    www.crystalcattle.com

    ReplyDelete