Kids learning about changing farm technology at Vesterheim

Gundersen Health System's Bruce Friell and Tanya Tysland (back) learn rope making with third grade students from Mrs. Barb Clausen's class at Carrie Lee Elementary School

Gundersen Health System has renewed their five year, $5,000 a year sole sponsorship of the "Window on the World" program at Vesterheim.  The school program helps students understand farming changes over time through changes in technology.
 
Each year about 240 Decorah-area third-grade students and their teachers, parents, grandparents, and other adults participate in the WOW program.  Over the past five years, Gundersen's sponsorship has doubled the numbers served.

Students can invite an adult family member or friend to accompany them on a visit to Vesterheim, where they try their hands at apple pressing, making rope, shelling and grinding corn, and flailing or hand-threshing grain using tools and machines from the past.

"Helping students and (adults) connect the past to the present through fun, hands-on activities is what the program is about," said Vesterheim Youth Educator Jennifer Kovarik.  "This shared experience at Vesterheim is a great conversation starter between generations and it is always interesting to hear the stories the students and adults tell each other," she concluded.