Spreading the Word

Today I was able to participate in a program called CAP. CAP stands for the Classroom Agriculture Program, and they asked me to make a presentation about beef cattle at Prairie Waters Elementary School in Chestermere.
To this end, I gathered all the braincells I have (that haven't been totally fried by High School) and put together a PowerPoint presentation. I would have liked to share it with you, but at this point I am not sure how to do that. If I figure it out, I will definitely let you all see it. Anyway, I went to this school and saw two groups of grade 4 students after their lunch break. To start the presentation, I asked what they might know about agriculture, and I was surprised with some of the answers I got. One young man even knew about the magnets used to treat hardware disease! I wasn't prepared for them to have so much knowledge already, but there were a couple of kids who had misconceptions that I was able to clear up for them. Overall, it was a great experience to be able to teach and show the kids what I knew about cattle.I was able to tie in to their grade 4 curriculum a little bit, building on things like Social Studies (Regions of Alberta and Waste and Our World), Health (Career and Work Choices), and Science (Plant Growth). They found it interesting how many aspects of Beef Production were related to their learning. They had lots of questions, but I ran out of time in both groups to get them all answered, so I invited them to refer to their teacher, who could email me later. Overall, I had a good time teaching all those fresh little people all about animal agriculture!