As part of our topic, ‘How does it grow?’ Maple Class were lucky enough to visit Hodore Farm in Upper Hartfield, close to our school. They began by sharing ideas about what happens on a farm and had pictures of crops, animals and machinery, talking to their learning partners about the different purposes of each.
They went to see some of the different machines that can be found at the farm, having an opportunity to sit on a ‘Gator’ and a loader and taking it in turns to sit behind the wheels!
Behind the vehicles, they noticed a huge pile of woodchips and found out that these are taken to Pembury Hospital (where lots of the children in Maple Class were born!) to be used to keep the hospital warm.
The children walked to the fields to see a variety of crops growing. Emma, our visit leader and farmer, dug up a bean plant and a wheat plant giving an opportunity to see how different the leaves, stems and roots are. The wheat stem is much longer and stronger but the roots are much shallower, despite the fact that it was planted much earlier than the beans. Whilst looking at the crops, they talked about what they had eaten for breakfast and thought about the crops that might have been used to make this. The children had eaten toast, hoops, croissants and porridge, as well as lots of different types of fruit.
Next, Maple Class started a fantastic experiment. They planted some pants! The pants are made of cotton and they decided to plant one pair in a field and another in the woods, carefully placing them in holes and covering them over. After a few weeks they will then dig them up and see what has happened. Emma taught the children a new word, ‘decompose’ and they are going to see if the pants begin to decompose over time and compare the rate of decomposition in the field and the woods.
As part of our learning about soil, the children had an opportunity to look very closely at what was in the soil using magnifying glasses. They found so many different creatures!
The children also had a chance to look closely at pond water in shallow white trays so that it was easy to spot things, identifying mayfly nymphs and water boatman amongst others. They also noticed that the leaves in the pond had darkened and begun to decompose and that there was lots of algae and pondweed to look at.
The children had the opportunity to play fantastic games too! They had pollen cards and had to travel to human trees and circle them, waggling their bodies, just as bees do when they have pollen to spread. They learned that this passes on messages between bees! They also played ‘you know you are wild if’ and had to listen carefully to the instructions that Emma gave as they travelled down to the woods for our picnic. Finally, Maple Class walked back to school along the Forest Way where it was wonderful to see the lambs and sheep grazing, and to find lots of puddles to jump in!
