Sounds of children learning, playing games and giggling filled Northwest Missouri State University’s Agricultural Learning Center this week as agricultural education majors hosted their second annual Ag Camp. About 150 children, spanning ages 5 through 10 and coming from locations throughout northwest Missouri and southwest Iowa attended the camp over three afternoons.
Emma Brushwood, a senior from Elsberry, Missouri, helped launch the camp last year and led it again this summer said, “I just want the kids to know where everything they use every single day comes from ag feeds us, ag clothes us, ag makes sure that we live every single day.”
Using a classroom-based curriculum provided by Agriculture Education on the Move, Brushwood and four other agricultural education majors who are summer interns with the program led children through activities that taught them about crops, animals and other aspects of the field.
On Tuesday, campers created soybean germination necklaces and made plastic from a combination of cornstarch, water and oil. On Wednesday, campers learned about feed rations by creating a snack mix with varied cereals and Skittles and then studying the amount of fats, proteins, sugars and vitamins within the mix. Campers also made butter, examined the parts of a hard-boiled egg, and they put on blindfolds to try pinning a tail on a cardboard pig or placing horns on a paper goat head.
During the final day of the camp on Thursday, they got close-up looks at a calf, goats, pigs and sheep to reinforce some of the things they learned. Across the parking lot, they saw large farm equipment, including tractors, balers, a corn treater and a semi-truck while discussing potential careers in agriculture.