Year 3 Visit Overbury Estate

On Friday 11th June, Year 3 went on a visit o Overbury Estate to learn all about how they manage and look after their environment. It was perfectly linked to our current topic which covers living in a more sustainable way, as this is how the farm and its estate are run.

We enjoyed 8 different activities and ad great fun as well. The activities were all about:

Woodland management - we saw how trees would be felled and trimmed and then what happened to the wood afterwards with a joinery demonstration.

Shepherds and their sheep - the Shepherdess told the children all about her job and what looking after thousands of sheep and lambs was like.

Pottery - the resident potter Toff Milway gave a fascinating demonstration of his craft using a potters wheel and talked about inspired him to create his functional works of art.

Minibeasts - the children were very interested in al the minibeasts that lived in the woodland and learnt a lot about all sorts of native invertebrates.

Rebalancing nature -  the children learn that sometimes nature needs a helping and to rebalance the damage that human influence can cause, and learnt about how the estate controls the pests and predators on their land.

Machinery - we saw lots of very large, very impressive machinery that works the land, and Famer Jake told the children all about the evolution of these machines from shire horses ploughing to huge combine harvesters. 

Food - always of interest to children was a look at what the food the estate produces is used for. They learnt it was used to make all sorts of food items from oils to breakfast cereals and beer!

Vegetable garden - we walked around the beautiful walled garden where numerous different vegetables and fruits were grown. They tried to identify each of the different crops and learn the names of some new vegetables too. They all got to plant a pea seed and bought it home to watch it grow. 

One of the highlights of the day was the gun dog demonstration which was spectacular to watch. The dogs were expertly retrieving in all sorts of different scenarios and the children were enthralled by them. They were also extremely cute!

A great day was had by all and a big 10 out of 10 was given for the trip by the children. It was amazing to be able to get out and about at last!!