Recommended Website:
Living History Farm
Age Range: 8-11 (Geared for 4th grade students, but many of the lessons can be tweaked for a wider age/grade range.)
ClickScholar Jennifer Young recommended this website that is a companion to a real “Living History Farm” in Nebraska, that offers a variety of free lesson plans about the history of agriculture in America and how technology has changed it. You can also virtually visit the farm by viewing the web cams at the site.
Jennifer wrote, “I was researching hybrid corn for my daughter who innocently asked, ‘What is hybrid corn and how do they make it?’ I ran across this site which is quite a gem!”
I agree. At the site you can learn about the man, David Wessels, whose estate made possible his vision of a Living History Farm. One of his major concerns “was that today’s kids – both urban and rural – have almost no idea how farmers went from essentially a medieval system of plowing with horses to huge tractors run by computers with global positioning systems and air conditioned cabs.”
The story told at the website, goes back to Native Americans who first cultivated the fields, through the first European immigrants staking out the prairie ground, to boom and bust cycles, and then the incredible technological innovations of the 20th Century.
When you get to the site you’ll find “Learner Resources” that include FREE lesson plans tied to the stories about farming in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and so on. Written by teachers for classroom use, they can be tweaked for use in the homeschool environment as well.
The Living History Farm has big plans for future growth to educate everyone about the role agriculture plays in providing nourishment to the world. If you can’t make it to Nebraska to explore the farm in real time, this is the next best thing.
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