Agroecological Activities

Now that you've learned about the 10 Elements of Agroecology, put them into action with these hands on activities.

Agriculture Lesson 9: Compost, Recycling & Resilience

In our last lesson we learned about systems. We learned about the 6 parts of the plant that work together, using synergy, to help the plant grow. Plants are systems, our school is a system, and don’t forget the solar system! A system is made up of parts that use synergy to reach a purpose or a goal. Plants have 6 main parts that help the plant grow, the solar system is made up of planets that rotate around the sun, and our school is made up of people that teach and learn ways to make the world a better place for all. In this lesson, we will learn about the ways human systems create waste, specifically food waste, and what we can do to reduce our food waste. Watch this video with Ms. Blood as she explores the history of composting and the ways we use it at our school.Then use the resources in the rest of this written lesson to dig deeper and reduce your waste at home!

Many of our systems, especially human systems, create waste - just think of the trash that you throw away every day. This waste goes out into our environment, creating landfills and big islands of trash in the middle of our oceans, poisoning our water, air, and earth, and making animals and people sick. Four out of every ten pieces of food that we grow is thrown away in the United States. That’s 40%, almost half of all the food we grow! Watch this video from The Lexicon of Sustainability about food waste and solutions from people all over the United States! Another great movie about food waste and what we can do to address it is called Just Eat It.

How can we reduce our food waste and make our earth a healthier place for everyone? Composting, or making compost is a GREAT way, and compost can build healthy soil to grow healthy plants in our gardens and on farms. This short film from Pashon Murray, a farmer in Detroit, shows us how. Composting is recycling for our food and plant scraps. What is recycling, you might wonder? Recycling is a way to break waste down and turn it into something new. This keeps trash out of our environment and gives it new life. We can recycle 2/3rds or about 66% of anything we throw away. But, we can recycle or compost all of our food!

Composting is a very powerful tool. Compost is the root word to and uses a natural process called decomposition, which is The process of breaking down organic material, such as dead plant or animal tissue, into smaller parts that are available for use by other living things. The Edible Schoolyard has a great lesson on decomposition and composting. Decomposition is happening all around us all the time! This video from TedEd shows us more about how important decomposition is to our food system.

George Washington Carver was an agricultural scientist that made composting very popular! He was a botanist and professor that used his skills and knowledge to educate and empower African American farmers living under segregation and the Jim Crow laws. He taught farmers about the importance of diversity, synergy, recycling, resilience, and so much more. His research and impact forever changed the way we garden, farm and eat! Learn more about George Washington Carver in these two films, one from Idaho Public Broadcasting and another from the History Channel.

Composting is something we can do every day, and helps make our soil, our gardens, ourselves and our communities more resilient, or strong when life gets challenging. Communities all over the world use composting, and have for centuries.

At MITCH Charter School, we compost the dead plants and food scraps from our garden and Agriculture Class in a big pile in the field. We only put dead plant parts in our compost. What kind of ingredients go into our compost? Leaves, apple cores, weeds, carrot tops, banana peels, orange skins, anything that is or grows on a plant. We don’t put any animal products like eggs, milk, cheese or meat.

There are millions of creatures that live in the compost at our school! Learn more about them in this lesson from The Edible Schoolyard. Overtime, insects like beetles, annelids like worms, crustaceans like roly polies, and tiny microbes break down those dead plants into smaller pieces that look like soil.

The finished product is called compost! The compost has lots of food or nutrients for plants and many other creatures that live in the soil. This compost can be added to the soil in our garden beds. Compost helps us to grow healthy plants!

There are many different ways to compost, The Edible Schoolyard’s compost system is similar to how we do it at our school.

Do you have a compost pile? Or a compost bin? Do you separate your food waste to keep it out of the environment? Your assignment is to use these 5 simple steps from NPR as a guide to separate your trash into items that can be composted and recycled. Take a picture and send your results to Ms. Blood! If you have or make a pile or a bin, I would love to see! Send all your photos to cblood@mitchcharterschool.org.

Agriculture Class Lesson 8: Plant Parts, Synergy & Social Values

This week’s lesson will continue to explore the concept of Synergy through James Baldwin’s retelling of the ancient story, The Blind Men and the Elephant and 6 plant parts: the root, stem, leaves, flower, fruit, and seed. Also embedded in this lesson is the consideration of an important life lesson: A whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This social value is especially important for us to recognize as responsible citizens and environmental stewards. Every creature, element, and human has an important role in our world. We will define and discuss systems, what they are made of, and the many forms they take.

Start the lesson in this video with Ms. Blood. We begin by harvesting radishes in her home garden, observing the different parts of the plant. Then listen to the story of The Blind Men and the Elephant and consider it’s message. They teach us that the different parts of the elephant cannot stand alone to exist as an elephant. The trunk, legs, tail, body, tusks, and ears of the elephant must all be connected and work together to fulfill the animal's purpose. This is Synergy: when different creatures or elements work together. We find this pattern in plants too! Plants have six parts (among many others), that all work together to help the plant grow and live.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama and her friends know that there are different parts of plants too. Follow along as they put the seeds of plants in the ground to grow plants that grow food that we can eat to grow healthy and strong. Then, listen to this song by the Banana Slug Band to learn the 6 parts of plants and how they are all connected.

The six plant parts combine to create a system. A system is made up of parts that use synergy to reach a purpose or a goal. A school is a system that is made up of different parts, like people, buildings, tools, gardens, and more. These parts of the school work together to teach students how the world works. Another important purpose of schools is to understand how we can change the world to make it a more just and fair place for everyone. A school is part of a community system. A community is part of a state system, a national system, the international system, and don’t forget about the environmental system that connects us all! What are all of the parts of our Solar System? What system are you a part of? How do you work with other parts of the system to achieve a goal?

Now that we understand some of the ways plant parts work together to grow, I’ll share an interesting scientific secret with you. For many years, plants have been studied as individual systems. Only recently, scientists have begun to learn the ways that plants use synergy to help each other. Watch Ms. Blood's video to learn about the “Wood Wide Web” and the ways that trees support one another from the BBC. If you want to dig deeper, this video from TedEd describes how plants communicate through the air and fungal roots in the soil! Plant systems are truly incredible, and there is still so much we have to learn!

The last note I will leave you with today is to ponder, What would happen if we lost the people or creatures that are all important parts of our systems? Think of people who live in dangerous or unfair situations, and don’t have enough to eat, clean water to drink, or proper living conditions. Think of endangered animals and species, clear cutting forests, over-fishing, and polluting natural resources like clean air and water. Recognizing the value of every part of our systems is a very important social value.

A wonderful book that illustrates this social value is You Are Stardust. Watch a preview of it here.

Your Assignment is to use the resources in the lesson and/or these cards from the Edible Schoolyard to identify what parts of plants you are eating. Take a photo of you with your edible plant part, identify it and send it to Ms. Blood!

Agriculture Class Lesson 7: Synergy & The Serengeti

Our understanding of Synergy (noun): when creatures and elements work together, continues to grow through Jerry Pinkney's telling of the Lion & the Mouse fable! Watch the read aloud by Mr. Swider's 5th Grade Reading Group. Jerry Pinckney was the first African American artist to win the Caldecott Medal for his book, which he set in the Serengeti. The Serengeti is a region in Tanzania, Africa. Learn more about the Serengeti and how plants, animals and people work together in this video lesson with Ms. Blood!

The Lion & The Mouse fable teaches us the important life lesson of synergy. It is always better to work together! The lion doesn't think that a mouse, so much smaller than he, could ever be of any use to him. When the mouse saves the lion, it is clear that no matter our size, we can always be helpful to others. What ways do you find you are helpful to other people? How do you help plants and animals? How do people, plants and animals help you?

The Maasai are a community of tribes that are native to the Serengeti. Similar to Native Americans, the Maasai were forcibly removed by British Colonists from their native lands onto a smaller part of the Serengeti. The Maasai are pastoralists, meaning they raise cattle on the pastures of the Serengeti. They rely on this cattle for most of their food, and protect their herd from lions and predators with a special type of fence. This fence is made from Acacia Trees that grow on the Serengeti. The Maasai use synergy with the trees to create fences to protect their cattle.

Many different Native American tribes work with different kinds of plants to create different kinds of fences, houses, baskets, clothing, rope, and other tools! Atfalati Kalapuyan tribes used plants like Dogbane and Cedar trees to weave. Learn more about their techniques from ethnohistorican David G. Lewis. The show Tending the Wild from KCET has a great episode called Weaving Community that shows some of the ways that tribes in Southern California use synergy with plants to create. In the film, tribal members also discuss healthy harvesting practices. It is so important for us to take care of and be responsible to the plants, animals and people that we work with!

Watch this tutorial on ways to weave your own rope out of grass. This episode from Desert Discovery shows us how to work with agave plants to make rope. It is amazing how many ways people and plants can work together!

Your assignment is to use synergy with plants to make your own tools or pieces of art. Follow the instructions in the rope-making video or Ms. Blood's daisy chain video. Send Ms. Blood a picture of your creation to cblood@mitchcharterschool.org. I can't wait to see what you work with plants to create!

Agriculture Class Lesson 6: Foraging, Diversity & Resilience

In collaboration with Mrs. Hill's Kid's Heart Challenge, we are going to focus on foraging! This week's lesson takes us on a video tour with Ms. Blood through the garden and woods as we look for native edible plants! Native edible plants have some of the highest levels of nutrients found in food. Foraging is a fun activity that gets us outdoors and using our critical thinking skills!

Safety First! Here are important safety rules to follow when foraging for native edible plants.

We'll discuss the history of the land we are on and the tribes that are native to this area. Remember to use the native lands website!

Native edible plants are the ancient ancestors of our younger agricultural crops. Learn more about the history of apples and their journey from a native edible plant of Kazakhstan to world-wide food phenomenon and art inspiration in this article!

In this lesson, we will observe plant characteristics like leaf shape and flower types. The Washington Native Plant Society has an incredible workbook full of information on native plants. It includes identification cards specifically for youth education. The WNPS website and Oregon Flora Project are full of amazing resources!

You can learn more about the plants we will observe by clicking these links to claytonia (miner's lettuce), plantain, dandelion, chickweed, stinging nettle, and mushrooms.

There are nutritious, delicious and easy recipes we can make with these plants, like this recipe for Plantain Chips! My favorite way to use stinging nettles is in pesto or on pizza. Make sure to use gloves to harvest and that you cook them first to remove their sting! No matter what, salads are my favorite way to eat almost any green!

Your assignment is, with an adult, to use the resources in this lesson to identify different native edible plants near you. Take a photo of them, identify, and send to Ms. Blood at cblood@mitchcharterschool.org. If you make a nutritious dish with them, I’d love a photo of that as well!

Agriculture Class Lesson 5: The Bee & Synergy

As we explore all the ways we can be resilient, this week’s lesson will introduce us to a special group of creatures to learn from. These creatures are called pollinators, and they are one of the most important parts of the food system. Bees are pollinators, and just like the food traditions we explored in our last lesson, bee keeping is an important food tradition that cultures all over the world share. Learn more about bee keepers from around the world in this podcast from the British Broadcasting Company. To learn more about the ancient history of honey and bees, including Egyptians that believed bees were the tears of the gods, listen to this episode of the Gastropod podcast!

What is a pollinator? A pollinator is a creature that carries pollen from one flower to the next. When that pollen is exchanged, the plant is able to turn the flower into a fruit, nut, seed, or berry. Pollinators are not spreading pollen on purpose, they are looking for flower nectar - something they love to eat! Luckily for plants, the pollinators’ search for food helps them to reproduce, creating food that humans eat and seeds that can be planted. Some of the insects and animals that act as pollinators are thousands of kinds of native and non-native bees, butterflies, beetles, hummingbirds, and bats. Even ants and ladybeetles can be pollinators! There are so many different kinds! To have many different kinds of pollinators means that there is great diversity in the pollinator kingdom. For more on pollinators, listen to this clip from the But Why podcast, in which Vermont Farmer and beekeeper John Hayden tells us about pollination. This clip from The Prarie Enthusiasts about native pollinators, plants and buzz pollination is really cool, too!

The way that pollinators and flowers work together to create food and seeds is called synergy. Synergy happens when two or more players work together to create something greater than if they were working separately. If there were no pollinators, we would not have ⅓ of the food that we eat or ¾ of the flowering plants that grow around the globe. Using synergy and working together helps us to be more resilient. What are some ways that you work with other people or creatures in your life? A few of the ways we can work with others is by cooking together in the kitchen, working together in the garden, picking up litter together, building habitat for pollinators and wildlife, creating recycling and composting programs, or building worm bins. The more people that work together to help our planet, the greater effect our work will have. Using synergy to work together toward a healthy and more resilient world creates a better life for every creature, plant, river, insect, and human. How can we use synergy in our lives to stay resilient?

Scientists have found that some pollinators are dying because of habitat loss and the use of toxic chemicals from human activity and development. Together, we need to look for these pollinators and help them survive. With synergy, we can all work together to create habitat, use less toxic chemicals, and protect pollinators. We can’t live without them!

Your assignment is to look for bumble bees and report your findings! Watch this video with Ms. Blood to learn more about pollinators and their importance. Take a picture of the bumble bees you see, and use the Bees of Oregon Identification Sheet to identify it. Send a photo to Ms. Blood at cblood@mitchcharterschool.org, and report your bee sighting on bumblebeewatch.org. While you look for bees, think of the ways that you can create habitat or use less toxic chemicals in your daily life, and help protect the pollinators!

Agriculture Class Lesson 4: Cooking, Culture & Food Traditions

Through stories of the Atfalati tribe and the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, we have been learning the ways that plants and people stay resilient when life gets challenging. Plants are a very important part of human resilience. All of our food comes from plants - even meat, which comes from animals that eat plants. Preserving food traditions and important cultural recipes is another powerful way that people stay resilient.

Our food traditions and memories are important parts of who we are. They keep us connected to our loved ones and community members. This week’s lesson is going to be about those food traditions and memories - the recipes and ingredients that keep us connected, healthy and strong during life’s changes and challenges. Different plants can be ingredients that have been grown, saved and cooked by communities for centuries.

Ramadan started this past week! Does your family celebrate Ramadan? Ramadan (or Ramazan) is a month-long spiritual period of fasting and prayer that commemorates the revelation of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad, according to Muslim tradition. During Ramadan, Muslims do not eat or drink from dawn to dusk, and the month culminates with Eid al-Fitr, a three-day celebration that involves praying, visiting relatives, giving gifts to children, remembering deceased loved ones and helping those experiencing poverty. What are the foods your community eats outside of fasting? How does fasting change the way you think of food? What are some other holidays from other cultures that practice fasting or giving up certain foods for periods of time? How do these traditions make us feel about the food we eat and the time we spend with our community?

Amaranth is a plant we have grown in our school garden that is very important to communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. As Oaxacans move all over the world, they can bring their seeds with them to grow, save and cook to remind them of their community. Corn is another plant-based food that is originally from the Americas and Native American tribes, but is important to different cultural traditions and recipes all over the world, including China. Watch this video with Ms. Blood to learn about some of the ways cooking can keep us connected.

Together, we are going to keep our community connected by making a Fox Family Cookbook. Think of your favorite memory of a meal you shared with your community at home, at school, or anywhere. Was it the North Georgia Candy Roaster squash from the garden in Ag Class? Beans from the school garden? Or the lentil soup we made from our garden herbs? Was it the kimchi 7th and 8th grade made from our daikon radishes? The fresh cucumbers or carrots? The rice we ate with our hands? The corn ash cakes or hoe cakes? Maybe you are creating food memories at home right now! How are you and your community getting creative in the kitchen?

Your assignment:

Talk to your friends and family to remember a dish that you remember enjoying and sharing with others. It could be a recipe that has been handed down through your community for centuries, an experience with fresh fruits and veggies from our school garden, or a recipe that you invented since we’ve all been at home!
Use the Edible Schoolyard Lesson to help you write or draw your memories and then to learn how to read and write a recipe.
Look at the Fox Family Cookbook page and Ms. Blood’s favorite recipe, Fermented Buckwheat Bread from Wild Fermentation.
Draw your memory or write your recipe. If you write your recipe, include the title, ingredients, and instructions, and a picture if you have one. Send drawings and recipes to Ms. Blood at cblood@mitchcharaterschool.org to put on the cookbook webpage!

Agriculture Class Lesson 3: Growing Resilience

Last week’s lesson taught us about the true history of the land that we now call our home. We learned about the people that are native to these lands, such as the Atfalati Kalapuya tribe, and the ways in which they were forced to leave their homes and create community in new places. Native communities all over the world have shared this challenging experience through a process called colonization. Native people have lost many of their lands, their foods, and their languages, but not all! Throughout these challenges, tribal communities like the Grande Ronde Tribe have stayed strong by holding on to their cultural practices and foods that keep them connected.

Another story about the strength of farming communities staying strong in the face of challenge is this great short film called The Palestinian Seed Queen.

This week, we will take the lesson of their strength and explore the challenges we are experiencing in our lives today. The ability to stay healthy and strong when life changes or gets difficult is called resilience. Growing our food, eating fruits and vegetables, and getting fresh air and exercise for our bodies and minds help us stay resilient when times get tough.

Plants can be resilient too! Watch this video with Ms. Blood to learn about the many different ways that we can stay resilient and grow plants at home.

Your assignment:

Choose one or two of the following activities to try at home:

Take a picture of your experiment and send it to Ms. Blood at cblood@mitchcharterschool.org. She will post them up on the Same Moon Photos Page for students to see each others work.

Agriculture Class Lesson 2: Learning About Native Land

These days, we are all staying safe and healthy at home. It may be hard, but it is so important that we take care of each other in this way! It has gotten me thinking about the places that we live and the story of the land that we live and learn on. In Agriculture Class at MITCH, we learned what it means to be Native: to be the first people to live in a place. We also learned that the Atfalati Kalapuya Tribe is native to the land that our school is on. Plants and animals can be native too! These native plants and animals that are a part of native diets are called First Foods.

Learn about First Foods of the Paiute tribe like Acorns and Chia in this great film from KCET & The Autry Museum.

This week's lesson will explore the tribes that are native to the land you now live on and occupy. We will also identify some of the native plants in your neighborhood. Where are the tribes now? Do they still live on their ancestral lands? If not, why? Is your family part of a tribal nation? Where is your tribe's territory located?

Use this Native Land Map to explore the tribes that are native to the area you live in, their language, and the US government treaties that forced them off of their ancestral lands onto reservations.

Here are two resources from Oregon Metro and the City of Portland to help you identify native plants in your neighborhood.

Your Assignment:

Click on this link to learn more about the native plants in our garden with Ms. Blood! Your job is to enter your zip code into the Native Land program and learn more about the native tribes in your area. Then take a walk with an adult in your neighborhood and use the identification guides to and try to identify some of the native plants you see.

You can take a picture of the plant you identify or make a leaf rubbing, label it, and send it to Ms. Blood at cblood@mitchcharterschool.org. She will post them up on the Same Moon Photos Page for students to see each others work.

Agriculture Class Lesson 1: The Mandala

This week's lesson takes us on an exploration of the Mandala. A Mandala is a symbol that is used in cultures and communities all over the world.

Mandalas are amazing pieces of artwork that humans create using many different materials. People from ancient Asian and American civilizations have made these symbols for centuries. What they all have in common is the shape of the circle. In Sanskrit, one of the oldest written languages known to humans, the word mandala means "circle". Sanskrit is an ancient language from India. It is one of the languages used in Buddhism and Hinduism.

Buddhism is an ancient practice that began in Japan, China, and Tibet. Today Buddhism is studied in many different places all over the world. Buddhists have used mandalas to symbolize the universe and cycles of life.

To see a Buddhist Mandala in the making, watch this amazing video of monks from the Drigung Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism constructing a sand mandala at the Asia Society Museum over the course of five days.

Hinduism is an ancient religion that began in India, and today, like Buddhism, is studied by people all over the world. Mandalas are used in Hinduism for meditation, to help people relax their minds and find peaceful thoughts.

1st graders will remember that Mayans also use a mandala for their calendar. It is called the Tsolk'in Wheel of Time. Click here to learn more. Mayan farmers and calendar keepers use the growing cycle of corn and the Tsolk'in calendar to describe their understanding of time.

The Aztec culture has an important mandala called the Sun Stone, which is a symbol that represents the way Aztecs understand the universe.

Check out the natural mandalas of British artist Andy Goldsworthy for inspiration to make your own!

Your assignment:

Click on this link to take a walk with Ms. Blood as she makes a mandala with natural artifacts! Your job is to take a walk with an adult and explore outside to gather natural materials to create your own mandala. Do you see mandalas that already exist in nature?

You can also check out this activity to see more ways to make mandalas out of natural materials.

When you are finished, take a picture and send it to Ms. Blood at cblood@mitchcharterschool.org. She will post them up for students to see each others work.