Farm Garden
Farm Garden
Hello and welcome to the Farm Garden which is run and organised by Mr Watkin, and his team of children from across the school.
The Farm Garden continues to be a massive hit with the children and school community and, although a lot of work and commitment goes into it, it's utterly worth it to see the enjoyment on the children's faces! I believe the animals provide a wealth of opportunities for learning and are a huge contributor to making school life fun and fascinating.
The farm gives children an early understanding of the commitment needed to keep animals happy and healthy, as well as an understanding of animal husbandry and with this being said the children without a doubt will be people who are kind and caring towards animals. Speaking of this our recent project on the farm has been about 'Animal husbandry.' The children have had their minds refreshed and have been learning how to look after the hens and how medicines can help improve a hen's health if they are to ever become poorly.
The farm currently provides a wonderful home for three goats, two ducks, six hens, and two rabbits. Occasionally we also have some visiting Lambs arriving in the summer term, where they will be looked after by the year 6 children. The children do an excellent job looking after the animals on a daily rota basis and have had the opportunity to earn bronze, silver and gold awards which the children consider to be an earned privilege, and many of the children look forward to their chance of looking after the animals and picking up the farm awards when they are turn arises.
Below are a few comments from Year 5 and 6 children on why they like the farm:
"Things I like about the farm? You always have to be responsible for the animals and look after them. It's really fun looking after them and it is always enjoyable."
"The new ducks are really cute and always on the move."
"I like the animals because I like looking after them and holding the baby ducklings."
"I like having animals at school because we can learn about taking care of them and also they always cheer me up."
"I like the farm because we get to look after a variety of animals and also our new farm display where we need to figure out our daily questions which is linked to an animal from the display, if we get them right we're awarded points towards our farm certificates."
"I like everything about the farm! We get to plant our own vegetables besides being able to do things ourselves."
We have a farm display situated in school where the children can discover daily interesting facts about different breeds of animals' whether they're chickens, sheep, pigs and cattle, to wildlife animals like squirrels, hedgehogs, foxes and owls. I consider it essential that children understand the different characteristics and habitats of each animal as well as knowing a specific type of tree when they see one.
When the spring weather approaches we will all been donning our gardening gloves and been giving the vegetable plots a renovation! Each year group take part in tending their own vegetable plot and with all our seeds now set, let's hope we have some glorious sunshine so we have plenty of vegetables to feast on in the summer.
The school community have done a wonderful job helping us raise funds during our summer fete, which will help towards buying materials for this project and go along way into restocking more animals next term.