YORK, Pa. — Pennsylvania Farm Bureau and its charitable organization, the Pennsylvania Friends of Agriculture Foundation, welcomed the 1,000,000th student inside one of its Mobile Agriculture Education Science Labs during a visit to the North Salem Elementary School in Dover, York County.
2003
The Mobile Agriculture Education Science Lab program has been bringing agriculture education to schools across Pennsylvania since 2003, when the first lab began making visits to schools in south central Pennsylvania.
Since then, the program has expanded to six Ag Labs, which travel into school districts across the Commonwealth, bringing hands-on learning to students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
Farm Bureau notes that the feedback from schools has been overwhelmingly positive and that many schools invite the Ag Lab back year after year, including the North Salem Elementary School.
School districts further benefit from an Ag Lab visit, because the lesson plans are aligned with the Pennsylvania Department of Education standards for Environment and Ecology and Science and Technology.
A Mobile Lab can educate up to 900 students and involve up to 30 teachers per week. Once stationed at a school, students enter the lab to perform science experiments, such as making crayons from soybeans and testing the water capacity of different soils.
Fungi fun
During the 1,000,000th celebration, students took part in the “Fungi Fun” lesson, which allowed them to work as plant botanists to identify functions, characteristics and properties of plants and fungi. The experiment included the dissection of a mushroom.
