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28 Jan 2025

Sustainable Agriculture (Middle School)

August-June 

Join us as we investigate the meaning of Sustainable Agriculture!  Learn how we can establish productive farmland for future generations by utilizing our natural world to guide our farming methods. 

Ohio Science Standards:

  • 7.LS.1 Energy flows and matter is transferred continuously from one organism to another and between organisms and their physical environments. 
  • 7.LS.2 In any particular biome, the number, growth and survival of organisms and populations depend on biotic and abiotic factors.

Indiana and NGSS Standards:

  • MS-ESS2-1 Earth’s Systems. Develop a model to describe the cycling of Earth’s materials and the flow of energy that drives this process.
  • MS-ESS3-3 Earth and Human Activity. Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
  • MS-ESS3-4 Earth and Human Activity. Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth’s systems.
  • MS-LS2-1. Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem
  • MS-LS2-5 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics. Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Ohio Social Studies Standards:

  • History – First Global Age: The Columbian exchange (i.e., the exchange of fauna, flora and pathogens) among previously unconnected parts of the world reshaped societies in ways still evident today.
  • Geography – Human Systems: Improvements in transportation, communication and technology have facilitated cultural diffusion among peoples around the world.
  • Government – Civic Participation and Skills: Analyzing individual and group perspectives is essential to understanding historic and contemporary issues. Opportunities for civic engagement exist for students to connect real-world issues and events to classroom learning.
  • Economics – Economic Decision Making and Skills: Individuals, governments and businesses must analyze costs and benefits when making economic decisions. A cost- benefit analysis consists of determining the potential costs and benefits of an action and then balancing the costs against the benefits.

Vocabulary:

Farming, sustainability, sustainable agriculture, methods, structure, function, soil, energy resources, biodiversity, ecosystem, cycle, organism

28 Jan 2025

Sustainable Agriculture (Grades 4+)

August-June 

 Join us as we investigate the meaning of Sustainable Agriculture!  Learn how we can establish productive farmland for future generations by utilizing our natural world to guide our farming methods.

Ohio Science Standards:

  • 6.LS.4 Living systems at all levels of organization demonstrate the complementary nature of structure and function.
  • ENV.ER.1: Energy resources
  • ENV.ER.4: Soil and land
  • ENV.GP.4: Sustainability
  • ENV.GP.7: Food production and availability

Indiana and NGSS Standards:

  • MS-LS2-5. Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services
  • MS-ESS2-1. Develop a model to describe the cycling of Earth’s materials and the flow of energy that drives this process.
  • MS-LS2-2. Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems. 
  • HS-LS2-7. Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.

Ohio Social Studies Standards (K-8):

  • Geography – Human Systems: Human systems represent the settlement and structures created by people on Earth’s surface. The growth, distribution and movements of people are driving forces behind human and physical events. Geographers study patterns in cultures and the changes that result from human processes, migrations and the diffusion of new cultural traits.
  • Government – Civic Participation and Skills: Civic participation embraces the ideal that an individual actively engages in his or her community, state or nation for the common good. Students need to practice effective communication skills including negotiation, compromise and collaboration. Skills in accessing and analyzing information are essential for citizens in a democracy.
  • Economics – Production and Consumption: Production is the act of combining natural resources, human resources, capital goods and entrepreneurship to make goods and services. Consumption is the use of goods and services.

Vocabulary:

Farming, sustainable agriculture, methods, structure, function, soil, energy resources, biodiversity, ecosystem, cycle, organism

28 Jan 2025

Goods and Services on the Farm

August-June

Visit our pastures, growing spaces, and Farm Market to learn about goods and services on the farm. Students will take on various roles to create their own market from product development, to marketing, to cashier, and more! Students will have the opportunity to buy and sell from each other’s markets.

Ohio Standards:

  • 2.MD.8 Solve problems with money
  • SL.2.1 Participate in collaborative conversations about grade 2 topics and texts with diverse partners in small and larger groups. 
  • Financial Literacy:
    • 1. Choices can be made with your money. Choices include spending, saving and donating. Money can also be saved in financial institutions.
    • 2. Competencies (knowledge and skills), commitment (motivation and enthusiasm), competition (globalization and automation), training, work ethic, abilities and attitude are all factors impacting one’s earning potential and employability.
    • 3. People may receive money as gifts, allowance or income. People earn income by working.

NGSS Standards:

  • K-2-ETS1-1. Ask questions, make observations, and gather information about a situation people want to change to define a simple problem that can be solved through the development of a new or improved object or tool.

Ohio Social Studies Standards:

  • Economics – Scarcity – Resources can be used in various ways. 
  • Economics – Production and Consumption: Most people around the world work in jobs in which they produce specific goods and services.
  • Economics – Markets: People use money to buy and sell goods and services.
  • Economics – Financial Literacy: People earn income by working.

Vocabulary:

 farm store, produce,  harvest, root, fruit, leaf, meat, in season, dairy, checkout, ingredients, goods, services, apiary, beekeeper, beeswax, royal jelly, pollen, pasture, rumen, ruminant, digestion, products

28 Jan 2025

Pasture to Product

August – June

You are what you eat! Our farmers care for our animals so that we can produce the highest quality of food. Young learners who visit the farm will deepen their knowledge of where their food comes from while middle and high school students will uncover the science required to produce the food in our farm market. Come explore how our farming practices can turn green pastures into great products, like meat and eggs!

Ohio Science Standards:

  • K.LS.1: Living things have specific characteristics and traits.
  • 1.LS.1 Living things have basic needs, which are met by obtaining materials from the physical environment.
  • 2.LS.1: Living things cause changes on Earth.
  • 3.LS.3: Plants and animals have life cycles that are part of their adaptations for survival in their natural environments.
  • 4.LS.1: Changes in an organism’s environment are sometimes beneficial to its survival and sometimes harmful.
  • 5.LS.2: All of the processes that take place within organisms require energy.
  • 6.LS.4 Living systems at all levels of organization demonstrate the complementary nature of structure and function. 
  • 7.LS.1 Energy flows and matter is transferred continuously from one organism to another and between organisms and their physical environments.
  • 8.LS.3 The characteristics of an organism are a result of inherited traits received from parent(s).
  • ENV.ER.4: Soil and land
  • ENV.GP.4: Sustainability
  • ENV.GP.7: Food production and availability

Indiana and NGSS:

  • K-ESS3-1 Use a model to represent the relationship between the needs of different plants and animals (including humans) and the places they live.
  • 2-LS4-1 Make observations of plants and animals to compare the diversity of life in different habitats.
  • 3-LS4-3 Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity Construct an argument with evidence that in a particular habitat some organisms can survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all.
  • 4-LS1-1 Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.
  • 5-ESS3-1. Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.
  • 3-5-ETS1-1 Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
  • MS-LS1-6 Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for the role of photosynthesis in the cycling of matter and flow of energy into and out of organisms.
  • MS-LS4-5 Gather and synthesize information about the technologies that have changed the way humans influence the inheritance of desired traits in organisms.
  • HS-ESS3-1 Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the availability of natural resources, occurrence of natural hazards, and changes in climate have influenced human activity
  • HS-LS2-1 Use mathematical and/or computational representations to support explanations of factors that affect carrying capacity of ecosystems at different scales.
  • HS-LS2-7. Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.

Ohio Social Studies Standards:

  • K: Economics – Production and Consumption: Goods are objects that can satisfy an individual’s wants. Services are actions that can satisfy an individual’s wants.
  • 1: Economics – Production and Consumption Goods:  People produce and consume goods and services in the community. 
  • 2: Economics – Production and Consumption Goods: Most people around the world work in jobs in which they produce specific goods and services.
  • 3: Geography – Places and Region: Daily life is influenced by the agriculture, industry and natural resources in different communities.
  • 4: Economics – Economic Decision Making and Skills:  Tables and charts organize data in a variety of formats to help individuals understand information and issues.
  • 5: Economics – Scarcity: The availability of productive resources (i.e., entrepreneurship, human resources, capital goods and natural resources) promotes specialization that could lead to trade
  • 6: Economics – Scarcity: The fundamental questions of economics include what to produce, how to produce and for whom to produce.
  • High School: Economics and Financial Literacy: Economists analyze multiple sources of data to predict trends, make inferences and arrive at conclusions 
  • High School: Fundamentals of Economics: Markets exist when consumers and producers interact. When supply or demand changes, market prices adjust. Those adjustments send signals and provide incentives to consumers and producers to change their own decisions. 
  • High School: Fundamentals of Economics: 6. Competition among sellers lowers costs and prices, and encourages producers to produce more of what consumers are willing and able to buy. Competition among buyers increases prices and allocates goods and services to those people who are willing and able to pay the most for them.

Vocabulary:

 Pasture, Product, Livestock, Farm Market, Mobile Chicken Coop, Herd, Flock, Egg (Yolk, White, Shell), Dissection, Ruminant, Bee Hive, Quality, Quantity, Management, Cost, Study

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