Grade 3 students take the Great Canadian Farm Tour

By Casandra Turnbull

A Grade 3 class at Paris’ Holy Family School is taking a trip across Canada to learn about exciting agriculture and food stories

From now until mid-May, Mrs Harrison’s class is participating in the Great Canadian Farm Tour (GCFT). Hosted by Agriculture in the Classroom Canada, the GCFT is a virtual program open to students in Grades 1-6 and aims to ignite children’s curiosity about the important role agriculture plays in their lives.

It's the first time Harrison has introduced the program to her students, learning about it when a friend showed her on social media. She researched Agriculture in the

Classroom Canada to learn more about the Canadian charitable organization and how this farm tour would give her students a unique opportunity to explore farming in Canada. She realized the GCFT tied perfectly into social studies, health and science, making it a perfect cross curricular activity.

“Teachers can choose to participate in as many of the virtual tours provided and the webpage provides wonderful follow up activities to delve further into the topics that are being explored,” said Harrison. Students travelled to New Brunswick on April 11 to learn about potatoes and headed west to British Columbia on April 12th to visit a greenhouse to learn more about tomatoes. The third workshop sent the students packing on a trip to learn more about research in Prince Edward Island. Each workshop is about 30 minutes long. Other upcoming workshops include sheep in Saskatchewan, chickens in Manitoba, Christmas Trees in Nova Scotia, Grains in Alberta, Bees in Newfoundland and Labrador, Apples in Ontario and Pork in Quebec.

The GCFT is currently in its second season, although this is the first trip for the Paris students. During the first season, 40,000 students and 2,500 teachers participated in 11 virtual farm tours