About five hundred Ames fifth-graders were on campus Monday to participate in the College of Agriculture’s third annual AgriScience Day.

“We are taking city kids and relating agriculture to their science curriculum,” said Laura Dierickx, co-chairwoman of AgriScience Day and senior in agricultural education.

With many of the children so far removed from farming, the event aims to show how easy it is to apply agriculture to everyday life, she said.

Seven stations with hands-on activities at every station were central to the event, said Beth Mowrer, junior in agricultural education and organizer of the event for the past two years. As youth circulated through the stations, they gained knowledge about the various applications of agriculture.

At one station, they learned numerous uses for soybeans in everyday life. Bean plants were passed around so the kids could feel the texture of the leaves, and soy milk was poured so they could see the difference in color from regular milk.

At another station, there was a cow and 5-day-old calf. Through the use of a feed sack and a flour sack, the children could compare the weight of the baby calf to their own weight when they were born.

One station gave the children a chance to see the inside of a cow’s stomach. They were shown some of the undigested food and taught how to relate the size of the cow’s organs to their own.

Karen Hoiberg, a fifth-grade teacher at Gertrude Fellows Elementary, 1400 McKinley Dr., said it is good for the children to be exposed to all of these different areas. She said a lot of the children have no idea what agriculture does for us and events like AgriScience day expose the kids to different career paths.

First developed as an agriculture education class project three years ago, AgriScience Day now encompasses the entire College of Agriculture.

“There are at least 10 clubs involved and about 60 to 70 College of Agriculture students,” Mowrer said. AgriScience day is one of the college’s biggest community service events.

Carrie Fritz, the event’s adviser and lecturer in agricultural education and studies, said AgriScience Day has three main objectives: increasing awareness of agriculture, bringing the children to Iowa State and giving the fifth-graders some real-world experience.

Also, Fritz said the teachers take with them “unique things to connect into the classroom.”

Teacher packets and goodie bags for the children were provided, so they could follow up on what was learned.

“We want to get an ag base in the curriculum to generate interest,” Mowrer said.

As enrollment in the agriculture program declines, students and faculty said they are hoping the early exposure to the benefits of agriculture will inspire future generations to become involved and to study agriculture.

“In the long term, we want to expose them to ISU, and show them how important agriculture is as a mainstay. It is how we eat and how we live,” Dierickx said.