OrchardWorld joined forces with Holland Park School in a bid to educate children on the curriculum topic of Fruit farming. Together we created a unique proposal which would educate Year 3 pupils through fun and interaction over of four separate events, giving them time to digest and really understand what they have learnt.
What can we say? They are a superb, willing and enthusiastic bunch who seemed to really enjoy what we had created for them, and we thoroughly enjoyed teaching them. The successful events have taught us so much about our future generations, their creative imaginations and how they really enjoy learning by keeping things simple and fun.
We visited Holland Park school back in September with the focus of not only having a bit of fun with fruit, but also giving it the ‘appeal’ factor to eat and find out a little bit more about the current knowledge by asking lots of questions. We showed them a basic circle of life on fruit farming, so they could understand where their fruit comes from the processes it goes through before finally ending up in their fruit bowls. All the pupils enjoyed creating a 'Fruit Hedgehog', using pears, grapes and raisins. We had a great time, most of the children enjoyed munching on their grapes and pears whilst really thinking about how they wanted to their hedgehogs to look. The different creations were outstanding, they were all winners in our eyes.
Following on from the above we invited the year 3 pupils to the farm to experience what happens during the fruit cycle and elaborate further on the information we gave to them the week before in class. We set up 6 stations for them as per below:
Fruit tasting station
We had Pears, Plums, Tangerines, Apples and Kiwi fruit- it was great to see everyone trying a piece of everything. Some of the children hadn’t tried Kiwi fruit before and loved them, whilst others claimed they didn’t like the fruit initially, but then went back for seconds and thirds of everything, changing their statements to say they 'loved fruit'.
Benji Butterfly station
Benji Butterfly is our brand mascot. He was created by an 11-year-old following a competition we put out on our social media for the younger generation to create our mascot using our brand values. The competition was a huge success and made it very difficult to make the final choice, but we were blown away how he managed to capture everything about fruit growing our brand values in one picture. We printed out copies so the year 3s could have fun colouring him in. Keep a look out on our social media as we regularly hold competitions for both adults and children to enter.
Activity Station
Year 3 were able to walk through the orchards and had a list of things that they had to spot on their journey. They had great fun learning about how the apple trees are fed and watered to being shown how to pick their own apples to eat (or save for later).
Phyto Mites station
This table had lots of things for the children to look at and touch, including an enclosed beehive and spotting the queen bee, to how we breed Phyto mites which eat the bad bugs that damage our fruit, meaning less pesticides are needed for this process.
Sustainability station
This is a very important on-going part of the business. We were able to show year 3 through a visual 5 step process of how we convert bio-waste from the farm into energy to run the farm. They loved the whole circle of life and really started to grasp the process, also learning some long words such as the meaning of anaerobic.
Tractor Ride
After all that learning, it was time for something fun to do, so we took them on a tractor ride around the farm to see all the orchards.
The feedback was amazing and everyone was well behaved and had an enjoyable time. Over the next few weeks we will be working with the school to create a recipe from the fruit grown along with donating some trees/seeds so that they can nurture and grow their own fruit. There will no doubt be some goodie bags to take away with them as well, so watch this space.
Now read part 2 - Read here ›
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