A few months back, the lovely Kat from the Hellen's Garden Festival team asked if I'd be up for doing a talk to a school she'd been working with.
My brief was just that brief! My job was to talk for about 45 minutes and to inspire them about growing.
Luckily Kat had been working with them for a number of weeks, she'd made some great planters at the school and talked about where we get our food from.
The class were brilliant, so well behaved and attentive, they asked loads of questions and there was a few farmers children in the crowd so they had some great answers to my questions.
I did some talking about what we get up to here and talk about our growing year. I then asked some questions about the names of different fruit (and pokemon) and they had to guess which was which, I threw out a few curve balls!
It went down a storm (even if I do say so myself) and the head mistress even came up to me afterwards to say how it was perfectly pitched to the age group. All the kids went away with a couple of packets of seeds that I had bagged up and I knew it was going well when the teachers asked for some as well!
I stayed afterwards and helped them make some planters from old milk cartons. This was Kats great idea and it worked so well, the children all got to decorate them in different ways and they looked great! The planters will then be used to put up around Hellen's Garden Festival in a few weeks time (Where I'm speaking again).
A great fun thing to do and one that put me a little out of my comfort zone. I wonder if I'll get to do any more in the future.
Anyone else gone to schools to do a talk or speak to children about food and growing?
Sounds like a good time for all. You'd be perfect for this adventure, Kev. You seem to be great with the wee ones. Love the upcycled milk jugs!
ReplyDeleteI haven't been invited to school as a speaker but some of my fondest memories of grade school were starting plants to grow and then getting to bring home to plant somewhere. I remember once having a sunflower which my dad loathed since he considers it a noxious weed in his fields that can do damage to grain cutting heads but which my mom dutifully helped us plant.
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