Pineland Farms: Family Education Programs

A very large part of our summer days have also been spent at Pineland Farms.  Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning Pineland offers educational programs for families.  These programs provide terrific hands-on learning opportunities about a variety of topics.  This summer we have participated in harvest lunches (the children harvest their own food from the farm's garden and gather eggs from the chickens and make their own lunch), tractor days, making salsa (all ingredients are gathered by the children from the farm), the joy of chickens, growing green and udderly amazing cows.  

The pictures seen here were taken back in July when we attended the composting for kids program.  As you can see, it is definitely a hand-on program, which I think is the very best way to learn!  In the picture above and in the one below Grace and Jack are searching through their plate of compost, specifically vermicompost (worm composting), to find the red earthworms that were working hard to turn our food scraps into nutrient rich compost.  Eve also had her own plate and loved finding the worms, however, she was sitting on my lap so I was not able to get a good picture of her enjoying this too.  I just love how Grace, Jack and Eve love to learn so much and that they are never afraid to get their hands dirty in order to do so!

Grace was excited to find several earthworms in her plate of compost.

Just before each program begins the children are given a sheet to color that relates to the topic they will be learning about that day.

Grace working hard to color her compost picture.

In this picture Grace, Jack and Eve are listening to a story about composting.  Most of the programs begin in the classroom at the farm where coloring, story time and learning take place before we adventure out to the farm for some more hand-on learning.

Paula is one of the educational instructors at the farm.  Here Paula is showing Grace one of the earthworms she found in her compost.

Pineland Farms is one of the most beautiful places!  The winding road you see to the left is where we walk after the classroom learning has taken place.  This road leads up to the family farmyard, which contains the family garden, cows, chickens, sheep, goats, rabbits and an additional classroom area.  This is where we harvest vegetables, fruits and herbs, collect eggs and interact with all of the animals.

On the walk up to the farmyard, Eve was especially taken with this one cow and she sat down for several minutes to admire it!

Grace and Jack also stopped for awhile to watch the cows in the field.

Jack walking up to the farmyard.

Grace & Eve

This picture represents Grace so well...she went right up to the fence to get a better view of the cows and to see exactly what they were doing!

Once we reached the farmyard Jack was a HUGE helper in preparing the compost for the garden.  Jack really loved this portion of the program.

Eve carefully examined the compost that Jack had spread near the tomato plants.  

Jack with his bucket of compost!  This was serious work for him.

 Jack could have stayed all day preparing the compost and spreading it on the garden boxes.