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Students perform rondo and middle-school class "adopts" a Jersey calf in classroom outreach program
Summary
Bullhead City students performed music selections at the May 15 meeting and Bullhead City Middle School presented details about an Adopt-a-Cow program: the class adopted a Jersey heifer named Charlie at Stokes Dairy in Buckeye, and teacher Cynthia Ferguson described Charlie’s growth milestones for students.
Parents and students participated in presentations at the Bullhead City School District Governing Board meeting on May 15 as students from Diamondback (elementary) performed short musical selections and a Bullhead City Middle School teacher described an Adopt-a-Cow classroom program.
Miss Tingle, music teacher for Diamondback, introduced a set of short student performances illustrating musical form (rondo). Students performed three short selections tied to children’s books and demonstrated basic notation and musical form learned during the year. Board members and the audience applauded the students’ recorder and vocal work.
Bullhead City Middle School teacher Cynthia Ferguson described the Discover Dairy Adopt-a-Cow program her fifth-grade classes used to learn about dairy farming. Ferguson told the board the adopted calf’s name is Charlie; Charlie was born Sept. 3, 2024, is a Jersey heifer, and the classroom received photos and a certificate of adoption. Ferguson said the sponsor farm, Stokes Dairy in Buckeye, Arizona, is operated by Jen Milliken and family, has more than 13,000 milking cows and 7,000 heifers across about 3,650 acres (as described in the presentation).
Ferguson provided month-by-month growth metrics the students tracked: at birth the classroom record shows Charlie was about 29 inches and 71 pounds; by one month Charlie had increased in both height and weight, and the teacher described subsequent monthly increases at two, three and four months. Ferguson also described calf care practices the farm uses — colostrum immediately after birth, navel dips in iodine, access to water and stepwise changes in grain and hay as the calf matures — and explained that Charlotte (Charlie’s dam) produces about 63 pounds of milk per day and will rejoin the milking herd after the calf is born and weaned.
Why it matters: Classroom outreach programs such as Discover Dairy connect students to agricultural practices and offer cross-curricular lessons in science, math and language arts. Music presentations highlight elementary arts instruction and student learning progress.
What’s next: Ferguson said she has already registered for the program again next year; the district will record these school presentations in its meeting minutes.
