The West Central Research, Extension and Education Center introduced third, fourth and fifth graders from the area to “Animals Inside and Out” on Tuesday.
The program is designed to give students a hands-on experience with farm animals. Presenters came from around west central Nebraska to offer information and answer students’ questions.
Randy Saner, Extension lead educator, said the program was developed by Kearney County Extension Educator Rhonda Herrick and her team.
“The program is basically to teach the kids about circulatory systems, muscle systems,” Saner said. “They talk about careers in agriculture, (and) we do injection sites and talk about injections.”
The students circulated between various stations, with some learning in a classroom environment and others in a lab setting.
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“We have the beef lab to talk about simple and complex stomach digestive systems and we have the skeletal,” Saner said. “They talk about how skeletons protect us.”
The teachers are Extension educators and 4-H leaders who came from all over west central Nebraska. Classes and labs included reproduction, circulatory, byproducts, skeletal, management, animals close-up, beef lab/digestive, muscular and careers.
“We talk about byproducts, which are what’s left of the beef that we don’t eat that have other uses,” Saner said. “The idea is just to kind of help them with science, science-based information and those kind of things.”
On Tuesday, there were 175 students participating from Brady, Stapleton, Maxwell, North Platte’s McDaid Elementary, Sutherland, Maywood, McPherson County and home schools from Sutherland and North Platte.
Today there will be 260 students from North Platte Public Schools doing the same program.
Saner said Amber Willard, Extension assistant 4-H youth development, went to the schools prior to the event on Tuesday for classes on the various subjects.
“So the students have actually had classroom time and now this is the actual lab,” Saner said.
This is the first time the WCREEC has done this particular program.