Fifth graders learn to be safe around machines
By Janet Kubat Willette
jkubat@agrinews.com
Date Modified: 05/27/2010 9:36 AM
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ADAMS, Minn. — Fifth graders from Southland, Sacred Heart and LeRoy-Ostrander know more about being safe this week.
The students spent Friday learning about farm safety taught by members of the Southland and LeRoy-Ostrander FFA.
"They love Ag Day," said Andrea McKichan, fifth grade teacher at Sacred Heart School in Adams. She's attended Ag Day, as the annual event is called, with her students for about 10 years. The fifth graders are always pumped to come, she said, having been told how great Ag Day is by older students. They also enjoy seeing the upperclassmen, who become teachers for the day.
The farm visit and touring the windmills are among the most popular parts of Ag Day, which also includes visits to Heimer Foods in Adams and Northern Country Cooperative in Adams, McKichan said.
Senior Steve Lammers and freshman Laura Meany remembered coming to Ag Day when they were in fifth grade. This year, they were the teachers, telling this year's fifth graders how to be safe around lawn mowers.
"It's really fun to learn yourself and teach it back to them," Lammers said. He's been involved in Ag Day for three years.
The group of five did lawn mower safety research during their homeroom and study hall, said freshman Ethan Heimer, who has his own lawn care business, Perfect Look Lawn Care.
Heimer said his goal is to teach the younger students how to be safe around lawnmowers since many of them have or will mow lawns.
At the lawnmower safety station, junior Ethan Sorenson read the do's and do not's of lawnmower safety from a poster taped to a tree. Meany, who had the best handwriting of anyone on her team, created the poster.
Junior Lee Kloeckner showed some of the safety gear people should wear while mowing lawn, including ear and eye protection, long pants, long sleeves, gloves and closed toe shoes.
Then Heimer, who brought his lawnmower to Adams City Park for Ag Day, demonstrated how to start a riding lawnmower and also the safety feature that shuts off the mower if a person rises from the seat.
Heimer ran over a tennis ball with the mower and Kloeckner showed the students what the ball looked like afterward. He talked about what would happen to their finger or toe should it come into contact with lawnmower blades.
Meany wrapped everything together by telling the students that objects can fly out of a lawnmower at speeds approaching 200 mph and that every year, 75,000 people are injured while mowing lawn, including people just their age.
After asking questions, the fifth graders moved on to ATV safety, where FFA members stressed the the importance of wearing a helmet while riding and having the helmet strapped. They talked about common ATV accidents, including rollovers and hitting trees. They gave a handout which said ATV operators under the age of 16 are four times as likely as older riders to experience a injury that requires medical attention.
Then it was onto general farm safety, where they learned about safety in grain bins and gravity flow boxes, and watched the little LEGO man get sucked into the soybeans in the toy John Deere gravity box.
The last stop was baler safety and PTO safety. Fifth graders counted as the dummy was sucked into the PTO with nothing but shreds of paper around the PTO left after five to six seconds.
It would take a person three seconds to realize what was happening if they became entangled and by then it would be too late, said Southland FFA adviser and agricultural education teacher Kevin Brown.
After each busload of fifth graders left, the FFA members huddled around Brown for a pep talk before the next busload of students arrived and they started again. They also snuck in a few turns on the playground equipment.