Nuts for Peanuts!

Teaching Theme of the Week

from Education World®

Peanuts spur all kinds of classroom activities -- from making timelines and snacks to investigating how peanut plants grow and estimating the number of peanuts in a large container!

Subjects: Educational Technology, Math, Physical Education, Health, Science, Social Studies

Grade Levels: preK-2, 3-5

Objectives
Students will:

• understand the role of the peanut in U.S. history;
• make a timeline based on a brief history of peanuts;
• learn where to find the "seed" of the peanut plant;
• grow peanut plants;
• measure ingredients to make peanut recipes;
• estimate the number of peanuts in a large container; and,
• write math problems to help count the number of peanuts in the container.

Keywords
cook, estimate, grow, history, nutrition, peanut, plant, recipe, seed, timeline

Materials Needed

• Internet access or copies of A Short Peanut History
• peanuts (optional)
• soil (optional)

Procedure

Note: Before preparing or distributing any food in the classroom, make sure you are aware of children's allergies or dietary restrictions and caution children about choking hazards. Many people suffer from serious allergies to nuts, particularly peanuts. Make sure that your students, students who may be in the classroom after the activity, or students in nearby classrooms do not have such allergies.

Share with students A Short Peanut History. This resource includes lots of information students can use to make a simple timeline of the history of the peanut.

Younger students might work in small groups with some members of the group doing the research, others making the timeline, and others hunting for clip art or drawing illustrations to add to the timeline.

Older students will be able to make more inferences from the material and use other library resources and Internet resources to flesh out their timelines. They might even write letters to request additional materials from a variety of Peanut Organizations.

Additional Peanut History Resources

• The Peanut's Journey to Virginia and North Carolina
• The Story of the Peanut
• History of Peanuts 
• Fun Facts About Peanuts 

Extension Activities

• Grow peanut plants: Refer to How You Can Grow a Peanut Plant and Baby Peanut Plants (PDF, 63K)for tips on growing peanut plants in the classroom. (Adobe Acrobat Reader, available as a free download, is required to read the Baby Peanut Plants resource.)
• Peanut recipes: Make peanut butter, peanut butter cookies, peanut butter crunch, and other Peanut Recipes.
• Peanut-s-timation! Fill a large container with peanuts, and provide plenty of time for students to estimate the number of peanuts in the container. Students can write their names and estimates on slips of paper and submit them. When it's time to count the peanuts to determine whose estimate comes closest, give each student a large handful of peanuts and have them group the peanuts by tens and ones. Then have each student work with a partner to combine their tens and ones -- and write a math problem that shows how they arrived at a total. Then have two pairs combine their peanuts and write a new problem. Continue combining peanuts in that manner until all the peanuts are combined and students have determined the number of peanuts in the container and whose estimate came closest. Then enjoy a peanut snack!

Assessment
Have students compare one another's timelines and rate them. Provide small baggies of peanuts as a special reward for the five students whose estimates come closest to the actual number of peanuts in the container.

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