By GINA KINSLOW
Glasgow Daily Times
TEMPLE HILL — Temple Hill fifth-graders Draven Pope and Hunter Jordan both think making ice cream by placing a Ziploc bag into a plastic tub with salt and ice is pretty cool.
“It was fun,” Pope said.
Neither Pope nor Jordan had made ice cream using that particular method, but both said they were going to give it a try at home, possibly as soon as that afternoon.
The students learned how to make ice cream Thursday morning by visiting the Kentucky Depart-ment of Agriculture’s Mobile Science Activity Center.
The ice cream lesson was designed to teach students about the scientific method, and how to turn liquids into solids.
The students followed directions given by the Mobile Science Activity Center instructor Jason Hodge.
He walked the students through the process step by step, right down to how many times they had to shake their plastic tubs in order to get the ice cream mixture to freeze.
Once the students’ ice cream had frozen, they were allowed to eat it. They couldn’t eat it in the Mobile Science Activity Center.
Hodge, who was assisted by Barren County FFA Chapter members, gave the students plastic spoons to eat their ice cream with as they left the center to return to their classrooms.
The Mobile Science Activity Center is inside a 44-foot long trailer that features 10 work stations.
“The students come in and conduct hands-on science activities that relate to agriculture,” Hodge said. “We have 12 different activities that teachers get to choose from when they request us.”
In addition to learning how to make ice cream, other Temple Hill students learned about soil erosion when they visited the Mobile Science Activity Center and younger students were taught a lesson on where food comes from and watched a movie about the dairy industry.
Debbie Sherfey, a sixth-grade teacher at Temple Hill, is responsible for bringing the Mobile Science Activity Center to the school.
She attended a two-day training through the Kentucky Department of Agriculture called Project Food Land and People.
“It’s just a different, unique learning experience for them,” she said. “It’s all about the scientific method. It teaches them to make a hypothesis. They have to guess some things. They have to do some measuring.
“They have to record data, so they have to go through the whole scientific process. It’s a good little extra enrichment program for them.”
The Mobile Science Activity Center will also be at Temple Hill on Friday.
According to Hodge’s schedule, students who visit the Mobile Science Activity Center on Friday will learn about seed identification and germination.
