Peanut and Peanut Farming

Objectives:

• Students will be able to explain how peanuts were brought to the New World.

• Students will be able to explain how peanuts are grown.

• Students will be able to describe the importance of peanuts in American agriculture.

• Students will be able to indicate various uses for peanuts.

• Students will be able to identify George Washington Carvers contribution to the growth of peanut farming in America.

Suggested Grades:

4th Grade - 5th Grade - 6th Grade

Lesson Procedure:

Print the reading comprehension passage and questions (see below).

Students should read the passage silently, then answer the questions. Teachers may also use the text as part of a classroom lesson plan.

Lesson Excerpt:

Even though it has the word "nut" in its name, a peanut is not a nut! Peanuts grow inside pods the way peas do. They are a type of edible seed called a legume. Peanut farming is an important part of agriculture in the southern United States. The states that produce the most peanuts are Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. But peanuts did not always grow in North America. At one time, they grew only in South America. Hundreds of years ago, Spanish explorers brought peanuts from South America back to Spain and later to Africa. From Africa, peanuts came back across the Atlantic Ocean to North America, where people began to plant them in the southern colonies. Today there are thousands of peanut farms in the United States.

Peanuts are not easy to grow. The process starts in the spring when seeds are planted in long rows with a machine called a row crop planter. A few weeks later, yellow flowers begin to bloom on small peanut plants. It is not until a few months after the flowers bloom that the peanuts begin to grow. They grow underground from a part of the plant called the peg. Pegs grow down into the soil after the peanut plants have lost their flowers.

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