Table of Contents
FAMOUS COWS
| From Mental Floss, Seven Historical Cow Tales is a cool list, including the saga of Nellie Jay, the first cow ever to fly in an airplane, and the story of Grady, an Oklahoma cow who got stuck in a silo and became a media sensation in 1949. | |
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Una Belle Townsend’s Grady’s in the Silo (Pelican Publishing, 2003) is a picture-book account of Grady’s silo adventure. For ages 5-9. |
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Borden’s Elsie the Cow was at one time one of the most recognizable advertising symbols in the world. |
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The (life-sized) Butter Cow has been a star of the Iowa State Fair since 1911. |
| Check out the stories of these Seven Cows That History Won’t Forget, among them Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow (who may or may not have started the Great Chicago Fire of 1871); President Taft’s cow, Pauline Wayne, who supplied milk for the White House; and Borden’s Elsie. | |
| See The Great Chicago Fire Wasn’t Started by a Cow. | |
| From Education World, The Great Chicago Fire: Did Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow Really Cause It? is a lesson plan on the fire and the cow for grades 6 and up. Included are discussion questions and a helpful resource list. | |
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Jim Murphy’s Newbery Honor Book, The Great Fire (Scholastic, 2006), is the story of the 1871 Chicago fire, including eyewitness accounts, and illustrated with photographs and period prints. (He says it wasn’t the fault of the cow.) For ages 9 and up. |
THE SCIENCE OF COWS
| Cows or Cattle? All cows are cattle, but not all cattle are cows. This elementary-level lesson plan (with printable worksheet) explains it all. | |
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Do Cows Pollute as Much as Cars? Agriculture is responsible for an estimated 14 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases – a lot of it in the form of methane, belched, burped, or farted by cows. |
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From the San Francisco Exploratorium, Cow’s Eye Dissection has information about eyes, an online demonstration, and illustrated step-by-step instructions for performing a cow’s eye dissection. |
| A cow’s eye dissection kit (preserved cow’s eye, instruction guide, dissecting tools, and disposable dissecting tray) is available from Home Science Tools. The website also has a virtual dissection and printable eye diagrams to label. | |
| Is Cow-Tipping Possible? Probably not. Find out why. | |
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Whales are believed to have evolved from a group of land animals whose closest living relative is the cow. Turn a Cow into a Whale is a lesson plan on this topic with printable worksheets and puzzles. Targeted at third-graders. |
| Though the cow may just be the most important domesticated animal in human history, recent research indicates that cows may have been almost impossible to domesticate. Find out why. | |
| From the WhyFiles, learn all about mad cow disease. | |
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What do cows have to do with vaccination? Learn about Edward Jenner, cowpox, and smallpox here. |