EDMONTON – “All my life I’ve worked with kids.
“There’s a need to incorporate safety in agriculture in the classroom. Agriculture in the classroom works.”
At breakneck speed, Marion Leithead tries to cram as much farm safety teaching information into her 20-minute session as possible.
The teachers and student teachers at the agriculture education forum are searching for ideas on how to incorporate agriculture into their classes. They listen and watch as Leithead’s hands fly to posters, felt stick-ups, coloring books, tractors and pigs drawn in finger paint.
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Leithead is full of ideas that work and these teachers want them.
But Leithead, an early childhood education instructor at Gardner College in Camrose, Alta., has shifted the program’s focus from agriculture in the classroom to safety in agriculture in the classroom.
“They teach street safety at school so why not teach them farm safety?”
Five children died in Alberta in farm accidents last year.
As part of her master’s thesis, Leithead is developing an agriculture safety curriculum for teachers.
Frustrated in the direct approach to get farm safety practices implemented on the farm, Leithead decided to approach farm safety a different way.
“I thought, what if I run a pre-school kids program, the parents would have to be involved. It’s a backdoor way of getting the parents involved.”
With help from local business, Leithead has started to assemble a kit and curriculum to help teach children about safety on the farm.
Farm machinery dealers donated toy tractors, bookstores donated books, banks donated posters.
Play time is safety lesson
Using the equipment, educators create a farm in the classroom. The children are taught they can drive the tractor, but there are no riders allowed in the trailer. When they play with wooden farm animals, they must build a fence. If they spray the trees in the shelterbelt, they must wear their safety equipment. If they pound nails into a wooden block, they must wear safety glasses.
“Kids learn by hands-on. Kids would rather be poking and prodding and doing. A worksheet is not going to do it.”
While it’s still in the development stage, Leithead is hoping the kit and safety curriculum will be used by teachers across the province to help teach farm safety.
Leithead’s farm safety program
1. Safety around farm machinery. Leithead’s husband built a power take-off out of a Mecchano set to explain the dangers of machinery. Leithead also has stickers and toy machinery to reinforce safety around machinery.
2. Safety around large animals. Leithead uses felt cutouts of animals and asks students to put an X over the scenes that are dangerous. She also added a fence between a cow and a calf on a bank poster that showed a woman holding a calf with a cow in the background.
3. Safety around grain flow. Using a clear, large spice container filled with grain, Leithead opens the bottom and shows how quickly children can suffocate in flowing grain. Older students can experiment with different types of grain.
4. Safety around chemicals. Wearing safety gear is emphasized when dealing with chemicals. Children are encouraged to wear the safety gear on their pretend farm in the classroom.
