Download Lesson - City Schoolyard Garden

March 2017 – Stone Ground Grains with Local Eggs and Honey (Cornbread)
CSG uses our Educational Roots Framework (RootEd)™ to design lessons for our gardens.
RootEd™ is grounded in our core values, and is intended to provide garden-based, experiential learning opportunities for youth to:
cultivate gardening skills, promoting health, nurture social & cultural development and enhance academic learning.
Trivia Question and Stone Ground Corn Facts
QUESTION: “This month’s vegetable is commonly eaten from a can, off a cob, or popped in the
microwave. Today we will be eating it after it is dried and ground into flour. This vegetable grows on one
of the tallest garden plants, reaching a narrow stalk high into the sky with long, floppy leaves.”
FACTS:
o Dent corn (Zea mays indentata) and flint corn (Zea mays indurata) kernels contain a hard starch
exterior and soft starch interior when mature and can be ground into corn meal. Comparatively,
sweet corn (Zea saccharata or Zea rugosa) is eaten fresh off the cob when the kernels are still soft.
Garden Lessons and Activities
To Barter or To Buy – History 2.8
Lesson: Have students experience using barter and money to obtain the three primary ingredients
necessary to make cornbread (corn meal, eggs, and honey). Create four stations in the garden – a grain
mill, a chicken coop, beehives, and a bank.
Scenario One: Divide the class into groups of three and have each group assigned to one station (exclude
the bank this time). Each student should put on a nametag that states their assigned role (chicken
keeper, bee keeper, and miller) and should begin with three portions of the product they produced.
More than one group can begin at a station if needed. Have the students barter with each other using
the goods they produced until each student has the three ingredients they need to make cornbread.
Scenario Two: Repeat the activity, but this time four students will act as bankers. Students must use
money as their means of purchasing the ingredients they need to make cornbread, going first to the
bank and then to buy what they need. The bankers should get paid $15.00 for their time working as a
banker and must use this money to purchase what they need to make cornbread from the producers.
Wrap Up: Discuss the two different scenarios with the students to understand the pros and cons of each
system, and why a society might favor barter over currency or currency over barter.
Grinding Grains – Science 3.2
Background: A grain mill is a compound machine made up of four simple machines – a wheel and axel to
turn the grinding plates, an inclined plane to funnel the grain towards the screw, a screw to push the
grain towards the grinding plates, and another wheel and axel that turns the grinding plates.
Lesson: This activity is best done in small groups. Use CSG’s grain mill and mortar and pestle to grind
wheat berries into flour. Show students pictures of the six simple machines and explain that the grain
mill is a compound machine composed of four simple machines. Have them decide which simple
machines are used in the grain mill. Then have students grind grain with both the grain mill and with
the mortar and pestle to observe how simple machines increase productivity and decrease energy use
in performing a task. Students can also observe the different colored parts of the flour once some of
the grain has been ground. Discuss how wheat berries are seeds that have a dark exterior and a light
interior. The dark exterior contains high levels of nutrients, and when whole wheat flour is processed
into white flour, these dark exterior particles, and the nutrients they contain, are removed, leaving the
less nutritious light interior particles). Students can use measuring cups to place 1-2 cups of flour into
bags to give away to teachers or tutors that have helped them in their class.
Storybook Suggestion: Corn by Gail Gibbons and Corn is Maize – The Gift of the Indians by Aliki