Wheat and corn are called grains because they produce small, hard seeds. What other kinds of grain can you name?

Which of these grains is used the most? Which makes the choicest flour?

Some kinds of wheat are sown in the spring. These are called spring wheat. This wheat turns golden as it ripens in the early summer to fall.

Wheat may be ground fine into flour for breadmaking. The grain also has uses such as feed for livestock.

The stalks of wheat are used for livestock bedding or woven into baskets and mats.

Winter wheat is sown in the fall. A few days of sun and rain, and the plants spring up like grass, remaining green through the winter.

Corn is another grain. It is planted in spring and harvested in the fall. Have you ever traveled through a corn maze of ripened corn? Mature corn grows taller than people, around 12 feet high.

Indian corn is one of the most useful of plants. Do you know why it is called Indian corn? It is because the Indians first raised it.

Sweet corn, if boiled when green, is an excellent vegetable. It is preserved by canning.

A large cornfield, with its tall, straight stalks, covered with green shining leaves and crowned by flowers, is a very pleasant sight.

Corn is sometimes called the national emblem. What does emblem mean?

What use is made of oats; barley, rye, and buckwheat? Some of these grains are useful in two or three ways.

There is another grain which we find on almost every table. It is rice. The rice plant, when growing, resembles wheat; but, unlike wheat, it needs a great deal of moisture. So the rice-grower sows it in fields which he can flood or drain at will.

We plow the fields, and scatter

The good seed on the land,

But it is fed and watered

By God's almighty hand.

He sends the snow in winter,

The warmth to swell the grain,

The breezes and the sunshine,

And soft refreshing rain.



Notebook Work: Answer the questions in your notebook.

1. What color does wheat turn as it ripens?

2. When wheat is ripe what is done with it?

3. For what is the flour of wheat used?

4. What is sometimes done with the stalks, or straw?

5. When is corn planted?

6. When does corn ripen?

7. How tall does corn grow?

8. Draw some of the grains you have seen.