RWE students learn science through sheep

Ralph Witters Elementary kindergarten students visited Lucy's Sheep Camp last week as part of their science class lifecycle unit.

The ranch, run by Billie Jo Norsworthy, has been doing an educational unit with the kindergartners for eight years. Other grades have also benefitted from visiting the ranch.

Kindergarten teacher Bethany Webber said the students go out to the farm in order to give them an out of classroom experience they can take back and learn from.

"They're learning what animals need to survive and grow," Webber said. "And how they change over time."

While they were at the ranch Friday students learned about how sheep are tagged, taken care of, and students also get to pet one of the newborn sheep.

"It was kind of, like, squishy and soft," Trysten DeVries said.

Norsworthy explained to the students that she put blue tags on the newborn male sheep and yellow tags on the female sheep. She also told them how she numbes and keeps track of the sheep.

At one point a student asked why the sheep didn't have any tails, and she explained to them that the tails are hotbeds for germs and disease.

"They put these rubber bands on their tails and they fall off," DeVries said.

But most of the trip was spent walking the field and allowing the children to simply watch the sheep move about.

"(We) walked with the animals," Lilly Quintanilla said. "Walked them and petted them."