Over the course of just one very busy day, students in eight individual classrooms at the Coon Rapids-Bayard Elementary School were presented four different lessons with a focus on how agriculture impacts their lives. These, along with other monthly programs, are presented by a regional effort through the Iowa Agriculture Literacy Foundation called Loess Hills Agriculture in the Classroom. The kindergarten class covered a week in the life of a very hungry Iowa caterpillar, right up until it spun itself a chrysalis on a milkweed leaf. When the beautiful butterfly emerged, the students were so excited they shouted, “She made magic!” “Not magic,” explained Melanie Bruck with Loess Hills, “it’s metamorphosis!” The first-grade classes learned about growing plants in science and in literature with the story of “The Empty Pot” and the second grade learned how to identify and differentiate what foods we eat and if they come from an animal or a plant. These lessons are available to students in a five-county region and more information is available through the link below.
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For more information on Loess Hills Agriculture in the Classroom: www.IowaAgLiteracy.org