Education feature: Dairy education roves to Brown Early Childhood Center

PORTALES - Did you know that a dairy cow will drink 40 gallons, or a bathtub's worth of water, each day? Students at the Brown Early Childhood Center now know that fact and more following Friday's visit from the mobile dairy classroom.

Instructor Garret Wilson came to Brown with a trailer filled with various agricultural tools and a cow named Maggie as he gave a demonstration that included various facts about dairy cows and farming in general.

All 350 of the 3-, 4- and 5-year-old students at Brown were given the chance to see one of Wilson's two demos and ask questions, which Assistant Principal Anna Brock said was a great building block for future learning.

"We try to bring experiences to children that would not get the experiences otherwise. The more experiences children get at an earlier age, the more they can build background knowledge to take with them," Brock said. "They may sit in a fifth-grade class sometime and reflect, 'Oh yeah, I remember when the dairy cow came and we watched it being milked.'"

Brock and Principal Melanie Skinner said the teachers will now be able to refer back to the demo when talking in class about several topics including careers, the agriculture industry, farm-to-table food production and nutrition.

"This just goes along with our curriculum and what we're doing in there about eating healthy and making good choices when we're going to eat," Skinner said.

Wilson said since the middle of October he has been giving the demonstrations about once a day at schools across the region of west Texas and New Mexico, though he will also travel as far as Arizona.

"I always love whenever they get so excited seeing the milk go up into the jar and everything," Wilson said.

He will present to students from pre-K through high school, getting a little more in-depth and scientific with the older kids.

"I hope that they takeaway learning where milk's from, learning that it's good for them. Also just learning about agriculture, that's really the take-home message I want from this too is for them to just learn, even if it's just seeing a cow for a day knowing where the milk comes from," Wilson said.

Skinner said about once a month the school tries to host a special event like the dairy trailer as a celebration for the kids, including previous visits from the Eastern New Mexico University basketball team to discuss making good choices.

Given the surrounding communities and the large dairy presence, the mobile classroom was a perfect fit.

"It just helps them understand the world around them and our area," Skinner said."