FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 18, 2004
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: BECKY BRASHEAR, 301-663-5895

Friday, Sept. 24 is Kids Day!
Educational Programs highlight Great Frederick Fair

FREDERICK, Md. — Friday, Sept. 24 is Kids’ Day at The Great Frederick Fair, featuring special ride promotions and educational exhibits. The 2004 fair, “Ag-Sensuate Your Senses” will be held Sept. 17-25.

Children ages 18 and under will receive free admission to the fair from 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. All carnival rides will be reduced by one ticket until 5 p.m. Regular prices will be charged after 5 p.m.

Special exhibits will be featured in the City Streets, Country Roads exhibit, Building 44, in honor of Kids’ Day. The Fifth Annual Ag Careers Fair will be held from 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Various hands-on activities will also be available. The Frederick County 4-H program will provide traditional and non-traditional demonstrations from noon - 6 p.m.

A Birthing Center planned for this year’s fair is an extension of City Streets, Country Roads. Visitors will have the chance to experience the live birth of various livestock and watch as the animal mothers care for their young. Organizing the exhibit is Dr. Cindy Burnsteel, a member of the Western Maryland Veterinary Association. The Birthing Center is sponsored by MD Life Magazine.

The fair will again be distributing 25,000 copies of the Ag-Venture Passport Educational Programs which will feature 10 stations throughout the grounds. A map inside the passport assists fair goers where to find the 10 stations. The passports have information to answer questions at each of the 10 stations, and stickers are included in the passport to paste on the correct corresponding page.

Throughout the week, kids will be participating in two of the fair’s new educational programs...Let’s Grow A Pizza! geared for third grade students and Spuddy Buddy, targeted for nursery school through kindergarten.

Sponsored by Pizza Hut, Frederick County Farm Bureau and the MD Agriculture Council Inc., the purpose of Let’s Grow A Pizza is to show how agriculture products are used in the food chain. The educational program will show most facets of agriculture that are part of one of America's favorite foods, "Pizza."

Third grade teachers in Frederick County Public Schools who participate in the program will be provided a pizza box which will include the instructions on how to grow a pizza along with lesson plans to incorporate with the class project.
    The contents of the box will include:
        Eight pizza slice shaped containers to grow the pizza in
        Tomato seeds represent sauce
        Wheat seeds represent dough
        Corn seeds represent oils used for baking
        Olive, onion, mushroom, or other vegetable seeds represent toppings
        Oregano represents the herbs and spices in the sauce
        Toy pig represents pepperoni topping
        Toy cow represents cheese (this can be taken even further to include a recipe for making their own cheese.)
        Toy beef animal represents hamburger topping

Teachers who attend the fair with their students will receive a pizza shaped dial, and recipe cards for each student, which will guide them to various locations at the fair that relate to the production of agriculture products used in the making of pizza. A large slice of pizza with information about that area and how much of that ingredient is used to make a large pizza will be at each area. Students will write this amount on their individual recipe card. When they are finished the students will not only have a better understanding of how a pizza is grown but will also have a completed recipe to take home and make a pizza.

The Spuddy Buddy program has been designed by The Great Frederick Fair to create an educational piece based around the five senses (taste, touch, smell, hear, see).  The program is sponsored by the Maryland Agricultural Fair Board and The Noland Company.

Students in nursery school through kindergarten will receive a preprinted card with Spuddy Buddy and stickers representing the body parts for the five senses (ears, mouth, nose, hands, eyes).

Participating classes will visit the fair and the various locations to help Spuddy Buddy find his missing senses so he can enjoy the fair. The students will
learn about agriculture as they visit the different stations as well as about the five major senses. Each station will have a hands-on activity related to the highlighted sense at specific locations. For example at “It’s Fiber Optics” participants will see and touch different types of fibers such as wool from sheep, fiber from corn, cotton, and fiber from alpacas. The will also learn about all the agriculture products animals and plants that produce fibers.

After visiting each location on the fairgrounds the student will have a completed Spuddy Buddy to take home, along with information about each location they visited at the fair.

In addition to the printed piece, the fair through the Farm & Garden Building, is offering classes for the public to decorate a real potato. They will enter them into the fair. They will be judged on Sunday by a panel of celebrity judges. Then on Tuesday and again on Friday, Kids Day, the general public will have an opportunity to make their own Spuddy Buddy to take home (free of charge).