A farm is a pretty safe place for social distancing, and nonprofit JK Community Farm is offering self-guided farm tours for children and their parents or teachers, with activity guides, and a food education workbook that’s funded by the Junior League of Northern Virginia.
The workbook and guides — which can be downloaded ahead of time from the farm’s website — were developed with Virginia’s math, science, health, PE, English and history and social science standards of learning.
They are age specific.
“Pre-K kids have a rainbow scavenger hunt, which asks them to match colors of their crayons to the colors of vegetables growing at the farm, so that helps them learn their colors. And older middle and high school students will able to learn more about nutrient density, soil composition and the global food system,” JK Community Farm Executive Director Samantha Kuhn told WTOP.
Other activities include going to the greenhouse and identifying the parts of a plant and using the farm’s sundial to learn about time.
The field trips to the farm in Purcellville are open to anyone, but they are offered on Mondays, a day some school systems, like Fairfax County Public Schools have set aside for independent learning as part of their distance learning plans.
JK Community Farm provides the guides, but the field trips are self-guided because of social distancing requirements.
“That’s why we wanted them to be self-guided field trips, so kids could stay spread out just with their families or their teachers,” Kuhn said.
The field trips are available with 30 slots in hourlong increments from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Mondays, and parents and groups can sign up on the farm’s website.
The field trips aren’t free, but they’re pretty cheap. JK Community Farm asks for a minimum donation of $5 per student to help cover the cost of materials and to support the farm’s work.
JK Community Farm donates 100% of the produce and protein it produces to organizations serving people in the D.C. area facing food insecurity. It expects to produce 135,000 pounds of food this year, or the equivalent of 108,000 meals.
JK Community Farm is located at 35516 Paxson Road in Purcellville.
