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Farm becomes outdoor classroom for Ag Day
At Temple Hall Farm north of Leesburg June 4-5, nearly 700 fourth-graders came face-to-face with Virginia's natural resources and agriculture.
Their verdicts: "Bees by a mile." "The weavers were pretty cool." "I really liked seeing the horses and cows."
For the second year, Loudoun's 4-H leaders and volunteers coordinated Ag Day for the public-school students. County agencies and clubs – Soil and Water Conservation, Master Gardeners, Loudoun Beekeepers, the Farm Bureau, the Blue Ridge Spinners and Weavers, Potomac Overlook Hall staff -- set up 17 stations to put the students up close and personal with their science and social studies Standards of Learning for Virginia's natural resources and agriculture.
Bees are model farmers, Bill Bundy, of the Loudoun Beekeepers, told a group of youngsters from Purcellville's Emerick Elementary School. They don't go out once, spread a little pollen around, and go home and play video games. They work from sunup to sundown. And they don't flit around. They go straight to work – in a bee line you might say. And without them, much of Virginia's agricultural bounty would disappear – no apples, no berries, no peaches.
"A lot of stuff, like the watershed, we have already covered,” a student said. “But we are just now learning about plants, so that was good timing."
Rachel Bartanowicz, fourth-grade teacher at Emerick, agreed. "The hands-on part was the best," she said. "We loved it, and we learned a lot of science and social studies."
Larry Wilkinson and Pat McIlvaine from the Soil and Water Conservation District passed around handfuls of soil, and plastic versions of the creepy-crawlies that live in it.
"Soil is forming under your feet right now," Wilkinson said, and passed around a hunk of red shale from Ashburn.
Students capped their soil and water session with a crawl through a soil tunnel, complete with dangling roots.
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