Its Week 9 of Ranger Stu's Virtual Zoo.
This week it is a topic that I am rarely asked to talk about at school workshops and children's animal parties and that is because... I don't currently work with any farm animals!
However this topic was submitted and I thought it was a perfect topic to cover as farm animals are part of our everyday life.
Whether you are a meat eater or vegetarian, a farm in some shape or form has produced food for our tables.
So thank you to all those wonderful farmers out there working hard for us all during lockdown!
As usual on Wednesday I will be posting a video on my YouTube channel (subscribe here!). We will meet some of my favourite farm animals and even play the delightful game of Who's Poo?
What is a farm?
A farm is an area of land where farmers grow plants or raise animals for food and clothing. Most of the food that we eat has come from a farm.
Arable farms grow plants and livestock farms raise animals. These may be raised for meat, for their wool, for their milk and for their eggs.
Some farms are very specialist such as fish farms.
Maybe you have visited a farm in the past? What can you remember from your visit?
Here are your weekly tasks!
EYFS - Cone Characters
Easy to print off and easy to create!
We had great fun creating these wonderful cone characters from Twinkl (during lockdown you can create a free account with Twinkl using the code TWINKLHELPS).
We used them to roleplay a farm and think about which food comes from which animal.
How about getting items from the kitchen and matching them to the cone animal that they come from or maybe think about the role of a cat and dog at a farm?
If you do not have access to a printer why not draw a farm scene or create some animals from toilet rolls?
I found this really great link to creating farm animals from toilet rolls, we haven't tried it ourselves but it looks great fun!
KS1 and KS2- Where does our food come from?
Its good to learn where our food comes from.
One strong memory I have from my school visits over the years is when I gave a talk about animal habitats at a school and briefly mentioned that a habitat for a cow or pig could be a farm as it is a place where the animal lives.
One child replied that they thought that farms weren't actually real and were only found in video games... this absolutely threw my train of thought and so I asked where he thought his food came from and he said "The shops".
As you can imagine, we quickly moved from the topic of habitats and chatted for a while about animals and that the meat that they eat was once a live animal.
So my task for you all this week is to learn about where our food comes from.
Twinkl has some excellent resources on this and I have added links to my favourite tasks below.
Here is a story all about a trip to the farm - https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resource/roi-t-2546172-exploring-my-world-grandads-farm-story-powerpoint
Here is a short worksheet that you can use after reading the story above - https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resource/t-t-2390-where-does-food-come-from-worksheet
I know some of you are unable to print worksheets so maybe you could draw an item of food and link it to the animal or plant that it came from in a similar way to the Twinkl worksheet above!
If you would like to share your work then you can post pictures of your activities to my Facebook and Instagram or you can post them in the comments section below.
Enjoy, take care and stay safe.
Ranger Stu
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