Students from a local school participated in a day of field trips, visiting several entities around town and learning about the role each plays in the community.

Kindergarten students from Eastern Elementary embarked on a day of field trips, themed “About Town” on Wednesday. The group, made up of students from both Margretta Johnson and Haley Currie’s Kindergarten classes, were able to tour the Brown Library, the North Carolina Estuarium and the Washington Daily News.

At the Brown Library, Terry Rollins, the library’s program assistant and children’s librarian, gave the students a tour where they discovered everything available to them at the library, he said. Rollins led the students through the children’s room, pointed out the adult fiction and nonfiction sections and showed the students the history room and the computers. He also instructed the students on how to get a library card and told them what a great resource the library is for them and their families. The visit ended with Rollins reading the students a few stories, Rollins said.

“We had a really fun time. The younger the child is when he or she is exposed to the library, the great the chances of the child being a library user through his or her life,” Rollins said. “It’s important for them to make the connection between stories, books and reading, and the library can provide a lifetime of enjoyment and reading for them.”

Next, the student visited the NC Estuarium in Washington. Currie said the students learned about animals native to the area, as well as the water cycle exhibit, which features a ball that represents a water drop. The ball goes through a wire track that represents the water traveling from cloud to land in the form of rain, which travels down from the mountains and ends up in the river.

During the visit to the Washington Daily News, Publisher Ashley Vansant took the students on a tour, pointing out the paper’s role in reporting on the activities, events and people living in the community. The students were shown around the facility and were able to see several newspapers from the past as well as an exhibit of the paper’s Pulitzer Prize medal, won by reporters Mike Voss and Betty Gray in 1990. Students also toured the paper’s studio where pictures are sometimes taken to go in its publications.

“We just try to do a few field trips and we always have this one “about town” — it’s what we call it — and the reason we do is because it exposes the children to local businesses,” said Jackie May, a teacher assistant at Eastern Elementary. “It teaches them about the cultural experiences they can have within the community.”