Lesson 10: FARM VISIT

To round off this course we organised an afternoon excursion to our farm where we grow mixed vegetables, fruit and run 150 free range chickens.

The afternoon started with a picnic lunch followed by a huge shared bowl of strawberries peas and snow peas. This was followed by a walk around the vegetable garden and orchard.

This garden visit was not structured, something that proved to be a mistake. Some of the children became restless and started treating the visit like an extended play time. If we were doing this again we would have some sort of activities organised. One idea would be to give each child a work sheet and pencil. They would have to look in the garden for the answers to a number of questions. This could be done individually or in small groups depending on the nature of the class.

Possible tasks/questions for a future garden visit:

• make a list of all the plants that you can recognise
• are there any differences between this garden and the school garden
• check the soil, compare with the school soil
• look at the lettuces - can you suggest reasons
      for the range in size from small large?
• etc . . .