I am always looking for new resources to share with teachers on my favorite fiber! Years ago, a friend from the Mississippi Delta wrote A Cotton Pickin’ Story for Toddlers. There are also a number of publications available through the National Cotton Council. But I just can get enough of video! And when a friend sent this cotton educational video connected to TED, well, obviously I had to sit down and soak it up!

Cotton fits so many different courses of study, so hearing about history and how cotton offers such strength and flexibility. I love thinking about Incas using cotton as breast plates and other clothing for warriors. It’s why some of the most dangerous jobs still feature cotton so prominently in the uniforms and clothing guidelines.

There is a lot of information built in here including how cotton physiology works with seeds inside the cotton boll producing the fiber. Understanding what a cotton plant looks like and how the fiber inside a young cotton boll pushes to elongate and showing how the cell walls build out. And this is part of the reason Pima cotton and Egyptian cotton is so popular. Some of these pieces of fiber strength & length are tested in HVI labs.

The kinds of uses go through so many products we use. Sure we think about our favorite t-shirts and jeans but how many of us think about the uses like diapers and coffee filters? Students will once they watch this!

A Personal Cotton Aside

From the opening, when they quote none other than BB King about cotton being a “force of nature.” I am in! Close friends and family all know that BB has been a major music influence in my life.

While I was living in the Mississippi Delta for a bit more than a decade, I would regularly see BB play, but I also saw him when I lived in New York and Memphis. But it wasn’t until I lived in Mississippi that I heard him talk about cotton as he broke ground for a museum that would bear his name. That museum is in an old cotton gin! He talked about how the cotton gin was both symbolic and a physical touchstone for him and for so many others in the Delta explaining cotton is a big part of who Southerners are. And he even took time in the dreaded summer heat to ask for the much needed rain understanding farmers needed the break. You can see photos from my run-ins with him over the years on my other site, JPlovesLIFE

The post Great Cotton Educational Video appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

It has been a little while since I’ve had a guest post in the series of people telling about how cotton is the fabric of their lives. This one has been in the works for a little while though and it is worth the wait. It’s from California elementary school teacher Sarah who blogs at  The House That Ag Built. She has both Twitter (@houseagbuilt) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/houseagbuilt) accounts as well. Thanks Sarah for sharing your story & the story of your students! 

Why I Love Cotton in the Classroom

Guest post by Sarah from The House That Ag Built for Janice the great J

As an elementary school teacher, I know the importance of teaching agriculture.  Society is so far removed from agriculture that many kids and adults alike think that food is made in the store and not grown in the field.  That is sad.  This past school year, I made the decision to step up my agriculture education a notch (or two) and boy am I happy with the results!  There are now 24 kids in my area that know more about agriculture than their parents and most adults in our area.

My first graders did a four-week agriculture unit and our focus was cotton.  We learned the structure of a cotton plant, what a cotton plant needs to grow, where cotton grows in the US, what we use cotton for, and we even got to see cotton that was straight from a farmer’s field!  Cotton is the perfect commodity to teach – even to such young learners!  Cotton is everywhere, it literally surrounds us in the form of clothing, we use it every day in the form of money, and it is found all around our homes in the form of towels, and sheets.

It is easy for kids to make a connection with something that is all around them, both at home and at school.  I LOVE cotton in the classroom! Having my students come up to me as proud as can be declaring that they are wearing cotton was so much fun!  It really brought agriculture to life for my kids.

I could go on and on about all my proud moments with cotton in my classroom, but I will let my students work show just how much they retained 7 months later.  I told them to write why cotton is important and here is what they did:

“I love cotton because I have my best coat and it is made out of cotton.  I almost wear it every day because it is my best shirt (coat) ever in my life and I have a lot of blankets at home and cotton is important too.”

“I like cotton because it makes pillows and I play pillow fight, and (cotton) gives me socks I love to wear.  And one more thing they (cotton) make me my favorite shoes.”  My 6-year-old student made the connection from cotton to pillows to having a pillow fight; cotton = fun!  They are so adorable!

“I love cotton because the cows eat cotton seeds and then they give milk and the milk goes to the dairy and the dairy makes ice cream!  I love cotton!  And I love cotton because my favorite shirt is made of cotton; my shirt is warm too.  I love cotton very very very much! Thank you!”  My favorite connection!  It is pretty cool that they can explain how cotton and ice cream relate!

“The important (thing about cotton) is that cotton gives us pillows and I love to sleep when I am so tired and cotton is so fuzzy and cotton makes money and I love to do a pillow fight and my blanket it is so fuzzy and it is blue and even plants of cotton. I love cotton.  Cotton is so important for us.  I love cotton so much if we didn’t have cotton we wouldn’t have clothes and pillow fights! I love cotton so so so much.” This writing is all over the place but when she was reading it to me after, she was so excited that she knew so much about cotton products!  She even remembered that money is made out of cotton.

A few of the picture my students drew on the back of their papers:

Cotton makes dollars (aka money).

Cotton makes sheets and clothes.

They even remembered how to draw a cotton plant and the boll.

As you can see cotton is lots of fun to teach in an elementary classroom.  My students and I love cotton in the classroom because it is easy to relate to and creates lasting agricultural literacy.

Thank you for having me Janice!

I love it! And think its awesome how much the kids remembered from one time of year to another! 

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The post Cotton is the Fabric of the Classroom for @HouseAgBuilt appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpSNK7UbRmg]

So the reality is, I was so excited to finally get Alicia into a cotton field at harvest, that I was giddy. You can hear it at the beginning of this video. (Yes, I resoundingly admit to being an agnerd.)

But seriously, having had cotton as the focus of so much of my work over the last mumble mumble years, and having not been able to really share that with some close family members due to the long distances…. well, it was long-awaited and did not disappoint.

Talking through the look and feel of the plant — seeds in the locks, some immature fiber that would make for a question if there was much of it (and there wasn’t) and basically getting set for a day of fun. I hope you enjoy the video.

This is part of my Cotton 101 series. I feel like I need to put a disclaimer here, I really enjoy cotton & have worked with it a long time but I’m not an expert. I just know experts (farmers, physiologists, consultants, etc.) I hope you enjoy what I’m doing, if so, subscribe via email above right.

The post Cotton 101: First Field Basics of the Boll appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Nothing like getting out in the field with a kid — whether they are from the city or farm.  You suddenly realize how cool it is to know even the slightest things about farming.  And luckily my nieces & nephews have always been up for a stop along the road and some ag education.

Last fall, as I drove my niece to a friend’s for a Halloween hayride, I spotted the first cotton field ready for harvest.  By the time I pointed and said look, my 7 year old niece screamed with delight “it’s cotton!”  She proceeded to point from one side of the highway to the other doing shout outs — cotton, soybeans, corn. Not bad for a couple of city girls! With that sort of enthusiasm I HAD to ask if she wanted to stop.  (I asked because she was “starving to death” and dinner awaited us when we arrived at our friend’s house.) 

She greeted the question with gusto and as we pulled onto the turnrow, I asked why don’t we get out for a couple of minutes?  We had to!  I said we could pick a few bolls, and my niece reminded me I had taught her a little about ag cause she asked me if I knew the farmer, saying she didn’t want to get in trouble.  Love that she understands and I assured her I know a lot of the farmers in that town and thought all of them would be okay with us taking a few minutes to learn more about agriculture and cotton.  I caught part of what happened on video and while I was far too caught up in her enthusiasm, I want to share it with you.

And yes, we may just have to get back out soon to watch as friends being planting the food, feed & fiber that sustains us.  I can just see her now asking questions about how far apart the seeds go, how deep, when we’ll see the plants and so much more!!!

If you want to know more about farming, you may find the Facebook group called Farm2U helpful.  They are also on Twitter with the @Farm2U ID.  Its by a group of farmers who want to talk to consumers.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYTgmFBA4SM&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00]

By the way, she had a great time on the hayride too!  AND she got a whole big thing filled with candy.  WHAT A DAY!

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