The Rural Voice, 1990-07, Page 36W
KIDS IN TOUCH
Agriculture comes to the classroom
by June Payne
hen an educational resource
kit enters a classroom and
children fight over who gets
to sit next to it, are in tears when it
leaves, and when the teacher's only
complaint is that there aren't enough
kits around, educators should take
notice. Something is undeniably right.
past few years. There was, and still
is, a need to encourage rapport be-
tween urban and rural neighbours.
Today the Ontario Ministry of
Agriculture has four teachers who
work as consultants with the school
boards and individual teachers to help
develop programs. The job of the
four -member partnership. The women
have received their copyright and now
market the KIT as a business venture.
"There's a lot of heart in this KIT and
a lot of thought," they say.
FARM KIT not only has its origins
in AITC, but also in a document put
out by the Ministry of Education and
entitled "Science Is Happening
FARM KIT includes scale model farm machinery for use in the classroom. Its creators, a
group of farm women from the Hamilton -Wentworth area, say the KIT encourages positive
attitudes towards farmers and farming, and a pride in Canadian agriculture.
The centre of all this attention
is a selection of models, activity cards,
a machinery booklet and a teacher's
manual, entitled FARM KIT
(Fascinating Agricultural Resources
and Machinery — Kids in Touch).
The creators of FARM KIT are a
group of women from the Hamilton -
Wentworth area. They started as
volunteers on the local Agriculture in
the Classroom (AITC) Committee.
The AITC program got started in
the early 1980s, thanks to a volunteer
group near London, Ontario, and has
become popular across Ontario in the
AITC committees and consultants
has always been twofold: first, to
teach teachers from non -farming back-
grounds a little about farming and ag-
riculture and, second, to make teach-
ers and boards aware of the resources,
both printed and human, that are
available to them.
Vema Loewith, Jinnie Wilson,
Doris Popper, and Eleanor Wood are
the women behind FARM KIT. "It's
been rewritten six times," says Vema.
"We wanted to get it right." What
started as a volunteer project with
their AITC group has evolved into a
Here." It is a mandatory
guideline outlining "the de-
velopment of the science com-
ponent of the curriculum for
the Primary and Junior Divi-
sions." As the document says:
"It is the responsibility of
educators to provide science
experiences that will encourage
children to develop attitudes,
skills, and knowledge that they
can use both today and in the
future."
The KIT uses agriculture as
a means to that end. The aim is
not to teach children how to be-
come farmers, but to encourage
positive attitudes towards farm-
ers and farming. Along the
way, various skills are honed
in the classroom.
The FARM KIT is made up
of 13 operable model farm ma-
chines at a 1/16 scale —
chosen because the models
were large enough to manip-
ulate and had moving parts. The
replicas represent the equipment
needed for tilling, planting, and
harvesting.
The teacher's manual includes the
aims and objectives of the KIT, a sec-
tion entitled "Tools of the Trade,"
which gives a description of each
piece of equipment represented, an
explanation of the implement's pur-
pose and how it would work, and
work sheets which provide ideas for
group activities.
There are pictures of the machinery
included in the KIT which are accom-
32 THE RURAL VOICE