Given that this youth audience is all rural youth, one would think that they experience the out of doors daily.  But this is not the case.  EKY youth are not as familiar with their natural resources of water, soil, trees, wildlife as they once were.  They do not play outside as much and have not experienced as much or been curious as much.  This Forestry and Soil Field day is designed to give them more indepth experience in measuring, inspecting, questioning, and observing their hillside environment.  They are instructed in the use of the basic tools to find direction, estimate distance, understand slope, feel soil texture and how it relates to erosion, determine the commercial volume of a standing tree.  Their attention is directed to examine leaf margins, the circumference of a tree, the number of needles in a fascicle, the feel of soil components.  They employ math to read a compass, use a pacing exercise to estimate distance, experiencing just how the classroom subject is used in every day life.  There were 292 4th, 5th, 7th graders with their teachers involved this year.  The classes are offered for four days by the KY Division of Forestry, RCARS agronomy dept, NRCS as organized by the Perry County 4-H program each year.  The youth see how these different organizations employ people who are educated in the natural sciences, the ones that work at least sometime in the outdoors, and they see what kind of subjects are important to maintain the health of our environment.