Down on the farm -- in heart of the city

The kids got to milka fiberglass cow, plant seeds and grind wheat into flour.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Pupils at Cleveland Elementary School got a trip to the farm Friday, and they never had to leave their building.
The Center of Science & amp; Industry On Wheels brought its Agriculture Adventure to the school for the day, giving children some "hands-on" experience with farming in the comfort of their gymnasium.
The visit was arranged by Mentoring From the Heart, a city school-based program geared to help elementary and middle school pupils gain academic and social skills.'
The mentoring program is a collaboration involving the city schools, the Neil Kennedy Recovery Clinic, Recovery Restoration Inc. and Big Brothers and Big Sisters.
Sandi Carson, mentoring program coordinator, said the Cleveland pupils weren't the only ones invited to the farm.
All 53 children in the Mentoring from the Heart program were included. Some of them are at Southside Upper, Sheridan and Williamson elementary schools.
Hands-on learning
Agriculture Adventures is designed to show children how food makes it from the farm to the dinner table.
After viewing a video on the subject, children get to try their own hands at farming, from milking a fiberglass cow, to grinding wheat into flour using a mortar and pestle.
Shauntierra Hardy, a fifth-grader at Cleveland, said she most liked grinding the wheat into flour.
"It's easier to learn how to make flour than to use a machine," she said.
Milking the fiberglass cow was fun too, though she got her hands wet, she said.
Kewann Skinner, also a Cleveland fifth-grader, said he liked playing the spin-the-wheel game called, "Inherit the Farm."
Participants get a quick lesson in how expensive it can be to run a farm and how unpredictable Mother Nature can be when it comes to raising crops.
"This is the closest these kids will get to a farm," Carson said. "It's a completely different world for them."
High schoolers help out
COSI got some help running the hands-on portion of the event from Youngstown students from Wilson, Rayen and Chaney high schools.
Lynn Duffey, peer education coordinator for the city schools, said the 18 volunteers are members of Youngstown's Promoting Student Intelligence/Student Advisory Board.
They came to Cleveland early Friday morning to learn how to run the various hands-on stations before the elementary pupils began arriving, Carson said.
The Agriculture Adventures program is presented by the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation Inc.
COSI On Wheels runs eight different programs offering hands-on science discovery to children across the state.
gwin@vindy.com