35 / 44
2016 Logan County Farm Outlook Magazine
Lincoln Daily
News.comMarch 24, 2016 35
Ag in the Classroom is a product of the Farm
Bureau. In most all cases, the Farm Bureau
partners with other agriculture based agencies
and companies to bring the program to local
school children. In Logan County that partnership
began Hyde at the Extension, but also includes
The St. Louis Dairy Council, the Facilitating
Coordination in Agricultural Education (FCAE),
and the Association of Illinois Soil and Water
Conservation Districts.
This year the Ag in the Classroom program
is offered locally in 12 schools and impacts
approximately 940 students kindergarten through
fifth grade.
The interactive program serves to make children
aware that agriculture has an impact on every stage
of their lives from the food they eat to the clothing
they wear, even to the dollar bills that they spend.
Hyde said for many of them, even though Logan
County is an agricultural community, the thought
that their clothing right down to their underwear
comes from agriculture is a real eye opener.
She added that even for herself, as someone raised
on the farm and with a working knowledge of
grain and livestock production, some of the topics
covered in the lesson plans have renewed her
understanding on the importance of agriculture in
our daily lives.
Hyde said that she had a wide variety of lesson
plans to choose from for her monthly visits to the
classrooms. She visits classrooms on Wednesday
and Thursday of each week and covers all 12
schools monthly. For this school year, topics have
included pizza, corn, turkey, cotton, the water
cycle, and chickens. In April, the topic will be
Earth Day, and in May the lesson will challenge
kids to imagine a day without agriculture,
something virtually impossible to do.
Hyde said that lesson plans were designed for the
student ages, with kindergarten and first-grader
classes being simple and basic, and the complexity
of the topic increasing as she works through the
grade levels. A typical class may include reading a
book and discussing it, watching a video and
‘Ag in the Classroom’ and ‘Teen Teachers’
raising awareness of our life dependency on agriculture
“Ag in the Classroom” is still a relatively new program in Logan County. Amy Hyde of
the University of Illinois Extension office in Lincoln recently explained that the program
kicked-off locally about three years ago. It got off to a slow start, but has continually
grown as local schools and teachers have come to recognize the value of the program
for children in Logan County.
Continue
8