Resources for Learning about George Washington Carver

March is Peanut Month, so it’s a great time to spend some time learning about the life and legacy of George Washington Carver. While he is known as a scientist who explored many different uses for the peanut, he also worked to help diversify agriculture among Black farmers, encouraging crop rotation and natural fertilization methods to enrich the soil.

He “creative chemistry” methods resulted in more than 280 products that could be made from peanuts as well as more than 150 made from sweet potatoes. You can read a full bio and learn about some of these products from Tuskegee University. This slide presentation covers his early life as well as his work in agriculture, science and has some activities like fact/opinion, similarities and differences and a quiz for kids to take at the end.

Calm and Wave has a unit study for George Washington Carver on Teachers Pay Teachers, but their blog post has some good information and resources, too.

Another great mini history lesson found on Teachers Pay Teachers is from Look We’re Learning. Her blog post goes into a lot of detail about what’s included.

The Mailbox has a mini booklet you can print that has space for kids to draw picture related to his life.

If you want to get into peanuts, you can plant peanuts and learn more about how they grow, or make this paper plate peanut plant craft from Happy Toddler Playtime.

Here are a few more quick projects and printables to use when you’re doing a George Washington Carver unit:

Art for Kids Hub: How to Draw George Washington Carver video
Monster Word Search: George Washington Carver word search
Education.com: George Washington Carver coloring page
Playground Park Bench: Painting with peanuts

My blog post linked at the very top has some books you might want to check out to learn more about him. And if your kiddos can handle peanuts, throwing in some peanut themed snacks would be a great way to round out a GWC day!

Fall is a great time to learn about and observe the birds in your area, but you can do this any time of year. Whether you’re watching from a backyard or a playground, you’re sure to find a few birds and can learn about the birds that are native to your region in any case.

If you do see birds at home or where your classroom is, the Merlin app is a great one (if your school allows phones). If you don’t already know it, it listens to the sounds around you and can identify birds based on their calls. Very cool and a reason for kids to be quiet while you’re observing nature. Having an old fashioned paper guidebook to the birds where you live is also a great idea because kids can use it to look up birds and it’s just fun to have in the science center.

The specific birds involved in your learning will vary depending on where you live, but here are some bird activities you can do with your kids at home or in the classroom.

Natural Beach Living set up a simple bird nature study center that includes bird books and feathers in front of a big window. There are also some printables you’ll find links to in this post including three part cards and bird observation charts for birds local to them and a bird unit study with lots of great printables (this is a paid resource).

Adventure in a Box has a printable birds of the world bingo game, which might inspire you to learn more about some of the 48 different birds included, from emu to snowy owl, grackle to Atlantic puffin.

If you’re American you’ll enjoy these state bird coloring pages from Flanders Family Home Life. If I can count, only 48 states are listed (which I wouldn’t have noticed except Arkansas isn’t there; it’s one of many whose state bird is the mockingbird). Print out all of them or just your home state, or give each child a bird to research and color to do a presentation in the classroom.

And you can learn more about the different types of bird nests and see if you can observe any of them on a nature walk with this guide to bird nests from Fun Mom Printables on Etsy. It includes information about eight types of nests with drawings and three part cards.

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