A regional literacy foundation and a local business joined forces recently to bring an agricultural program into our local schools. Elementary students from the Kuemper Catholic School System and the Carroll Community School District were introduced to “Hatching Science with Classroom Chicks,” presented by Loess Hills Agriculture in the Classroom and sponsored by Haley Equipment. Melanie Bruck, with Loess Hills, brought an incubator into each school and then provided a lesson on using the Chick Life Cycle hatching kit. The kit consists of 21 plastic eggs that are used to demonstrate each stage of development as the classes monitor real fertilized eggs for the three-week-long period until hatching. The eggs were candled at one week to check progress. “The students are completely engaged with this program,” Bruck says. “They were quite literally leaning in as I described each aspect of this lesson. I would say I had their full attention.” Loess Hills Agriculture in the Classroom is a regional effort of the Iowa Agriculture Literacy Foundation (IALF). They serve school districts in Carroll, Crawford, Shelby, Harrison and West Pottawattamie Counties, with a mission of exposing youth to the global significance of agriculture.
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