FFA students teach ag classes to youngsters

Jennings Elementary School third graders learn how nitrogen affects the environment. Above, Colfax FFA students let the youngsters get their hands dirty by letting them see how the ocean becomes polluted.

Even through snow, rain and wind, nothing could dampen the enthusiasm of Colfax High School FFA students as they taught grade school students about nitrogen.

Brian Long, FFA advisor, said this is the 10th year the group has organized an Ag Day.

Long said the FFAers lead first- through sixth-graders through activities that taught them some aspect of agriculture. This year, the FFA taught their young students about how nitrogen plays a role in the environment.

“The real challenge is getting it down to where the little guys can understand it,” Long said.

Long said nitrogen has four phases - right place, right time, right source, right rate - and the FFA students showed their young charges the phases through four stations.

In the first station, young students were asked to put brown-looking plants on a felt board, then rain and other elements, demonstrating how nitrogen plays different roles in building plants.

The second station let youngsters get their hands dirty as they learned how pollution gets into the ocean. Students put color into a hole they dug in a box full of sand to show how the color filtered through the sand into water next to it.

As the FFA students guided them along into a third station, they entered a tunnel and went through stages of how the environment is affected, going from dead, brown plants to healthy plants.

Finally, students were shown how every day activities created pollution. With each drop of color into a glass the water became a worse color. When students poured their glasses into one big container, it showed how they all could contribute to pollution.

Some farm animals, a horse, sheep, a pygmy goat and calves were in pens next to the FFA shop, but Long said they “were just for fun. The kids like to pet them.”

The FFA students wrote a sequel to Dr. Suess’s book, “The Lorax,” that was distributed to the classes before Ag Day. The book, written to imitate Dr. Suess’s style, told students how something brown can become green and alive again.

Long said coming up with ideas for the demonstrations was a combination of “me and the kids.”

“I think they learned how nitrogen works and how to communicate more effectively,” he said. “I also think they learned the value of teaching and how difficult it is to be a teacher.”

The Ag Day activities qualified the FFA students for the Forestry Agriculture Resource Management program which they won last year at FFA state competition along with $500. They also will qualify for the Nutrients for Life program, that they also won last year, along with $5,000.

Long said they put the money to fund future projects. Long hopes they will win again but they won’t find out until the state convention in May.

Above, grade school students learn how every day activities can pollute the environment and below, FFA students built a felt board to let youngsters decorate while demonstrating how nitrogen works to make plants green again. According to FFA Advisor Brian Long, this is the 10th year for Ag Day activities. Last year the FFA won two cash prizes at the state convention and they hope to duplicate that this year.