Devon Clinton Estates, Kingfisher Award 2022 - WINNERS!

We are thrilled to be able to tell you that Woodbury Salterton won the Kingfisher Award yesterday. The East Devon Kingfisher Award Scheme (KAS) is an initiative for pupils to discover more about food, farming and the environment. The children had a wonderful time on the farm before half term and have worked incredibly hard over the last few weeks to present their work to the judges.

These are some of the activities that the children did as part of their project:

We looked at land use in the UK (Geography) and the different types of farming.

Children researched organic farming practices and how this is more sustainable for our world. Children presented their information in different ways (Powerpoints, news reports, videos and posters) 

They looked at small scale farming - allotments and conducted some geographical field work to answer the hypothesis ' The allotment in Woodbury Salterton is well placed in the locality.'  They also looked at food chains and food webs in the allotments and how changes to the food chain upset the whole eco-system - especially the use of pesticides and the damage that they cause. 

This led to a revival of our school allotment plots during forest school time. 

When finding out about organic farming practices - the children identified the crucial role of bees for pollination and how we rely on bees for our own survival.  They dissected a flower in Science to understand the process of pollination, wrote about life cycle of bees, how they communicate, the plight of bees in recent years and how we can help bees in our own gardens as well as drawing labelled pictures of bees and explanations about body parts!

More science involved a detailed hedgerow study where children identified plants and creatures living within them. The discovered how hedges are the biggest habitat in the UK and why there has been a decline of them due to farming practices and the impact of this on our eco-system. They found out how important hedges are to the environment and the role they play in organic farming and in reducing flooding.

The children then drew a beautiful watercolour of a threatened animal that relies on hedgerows for survival and wrote a report about the animal. 

At forest school they made bug hotels for the pollinators. 

They also conducted science experiments looking at different soil types, what soil is made up of and the permeability of soil and how farmers need to look after and manage the soil. They conducted an investigation into the effect of fertilisers on the growth of radishes. 

For homework, they conducted a bird survey and presented this information in graphs.

Finally, for the Design and Technology lessons this half term, the children researched and designed flapjack recipes that were organic and a healthy snack for a child to eat at break time. They researched nutritional content and made their flapjacks -  which were delicious!

You can see how hard the children have worked - We were lucky that our theme this term was Sow, Grow and Farm! 

A huge congratulations to all involved.