First-grade students take field trip to local farm

Belton White / The Item First-grade Kingsbury Elementary School students feed a cow at Richburg Farms in Manning on Thursday while on a field trip.

By BELTON WHITE
Item Staff Writer
bwhite@theitem.com

Students in Tracy Spigner's first-grade class at Kingsbury Elementary School began learning about the life cycle of pumpkins this week.

Their student teacher, Amanda Griffin, was the one who planned and taught the lessons.

As a part of Griffin's University of South Carolina graduation requirements, she must teach in a class for a semester, including doing a lesson on her own.

Because the state's first-grade academic standards require that students learn the life cycle of plants, Griffin decided that talking about pumpkins would go hand in hand with Halloween and the fall season. Additionally, she said, you can do almost any math, science or reading lesson by using a pumpkin.

On Wednesday, Griffin read "From Seed to Pumpkin" by Wendy Feffer to the class and brought in two pumpkin plants she's been growing.

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"By bringing it into the classroom, hopefully, we can show how pumpkin seeds become plants," she said. "They have some of the foundation so that if the farmers ask questions, they'll know the answers."

Four other Kingsbury first-grade classes, in addition to Spigner's class, traveled on Thursday to Richburg Farms near Manning to stuff scarecrows with hay, take a hayride and see other aspects of a true working farm.

At the end of the day, each student received a pumpkin to take home. Griffin plans to use the pumpkins next week in lessons on estimation, weight and measurement.

After Griffin's life-cycle lesson Wednesday, students had to color six pictures, cut them out and paste them in the order of each step in the cycle.

"It comes out a big flower, then turns into a green pumpkin, then a big pumpkin, then a big, big, orange pumpkin," said 7-year-old Brandan Burns.

Some of the students hadn't been to a farm before Thursday.

But Chloe Goswell, 6, said she had been to a strawberry patch and knew the difference between a strawberry and a pumpkin.

Belton White / The Item Chloe Gosnell, 6, a first grader at Kingsbury Elementary School stuffs hay into a scarecrow while on a field trip to Richburg Farms in Manning on Thursday.

"The seeds are on the outside of a strawberry," she said. On the pumpkin, they're "in the inside and the seeds are soft."

Chloe was also no stranger to pumpkin seeds, noting that they're planted in the spring.

"Where I used to live, I planted pumpkin seeds," she said. But, she added, "I moved before I got to see them grow."

By Thursday, the lessons Griffin had been teaching since Monday was already starting to sink in.

Leanna Brown said her son did a little extra work at home on what he had learned in Spigner's class.

"He made his own book about the life cycle of pumpkins. He did it alone and made his own book," she said. "He was so interested in the life cycle of pumpkins."

Brown's older son had been in Spigner's class a few years ago, and she was excited to have her second son in that teacher's class. She said she was also impressed with Griffin's work with the kids this year.

"I've had student teachers with my kids before," she said. "But she is awesome."

Griffin, a Sumter native, has been with the class since the first day of school and will graduate with a bachelor's degree in early childhood education in December, after she finishes her student teaching.

Contact Staff Writer Belton White at bwhite@theitem.com or (803) 774-1295.