MACON, Ga. — When you walk into Heard Elementary, you'll see the excitement is high for the Cherry Blossom Festival.
They're learning about Japanese culture in classrooms, planting actual cherry trees in the school's garden, and working on tree artwork for the hallway.
"We're planting them because we want to make our school look really pretty, and it might have a pop to it," said Carter Price.
Carter Price and Aria Goodfin are in Jennifer Wilson's second grade agriculture class. Both say they've learned so much about cherry blossom trees.
"Cherry trees need lots of sun. You need to loosen up the roots so it knows where to grow; you don't need to cover up the bottom of the rim," said Price.
"The Okame you can plant in the fall, but we mostly plant them in like early spring," said Goodfin.
Not only are these projects an effort to celebrate cherry blossom season, it's also a chance to dive deeper into the schools Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) curriculum.
"Agriculture is our number one industry in Georgia, so we want to start the kids young learning about agriculture and careers in agriculture, so that they can prepare themselves as they get older to maybe be interested in something that's not farming, but there's a lot of careers in agriculture so we're starting them young," said Wilson.
Aside from the Cherry Blossom Festival, students are also learning how to monitor crops with drones, promote and manage a farmers market, and work on starting a recycling program and greenhouse.
"The programs that we have going on throughout our school kind of help each other so that we'll have a sustainable agriculture program," said Wilson.
You can catch Heard Elementary's dance team in action performing this weekend at the parade, and you can catch two students on Keep Macon-Bibb Beautiful's float.