Two hundred Stamford school children learn where their breakfast comes from!
Educational events provider Kids Country was thrilled to bring their fully booked Breakfast Week event to The Bluecoat School, Stamford, this month, with 200 Key Stage 1 and 2 children taking part in hands-on workshops covering everything from sausage making with free-range rare breed pork, to making pancakes, and from the ‘metre square farm’ to learning about what makes a healthy breakfast with supporters Co-op Food. The highlight of the day for many of the children was a sit on a huge John Deere tractor as Farmer Tom (Kids Country chairman Tom Martin) from near Peterborough, talked the children through how tractors and other machinery are used on the farm to grow all of the crops for our cereals.
The Bluecoat School headteacher, Mr Ben Bloor, said: “The Kids Country Breakfast Week event was a great opportunity for our children to experience how their food gets from the field to their breakfast plates. From making their own pancakes and sausages to seeing a tractor and learning what they do (they can actually drive themselves!) the children were fascinated with everything that is involved in the thing we call ‘breakfast’. They have used this as inspiration for writing about their favourite breakfasts to designing a breakfast menu to work on farms.”
Mr Bloor continued: “This is one of several events we have taken part in run by Kids Country. From the Food and Farming Day to the keeping of bees and growing our own potatoes, every event organised fits with our school ethos of ‘Bringing Learning to Life’ and leads children into work right across the curriculum. These events are a fantastic way of supporting learning across the full range of curriculum subjects.”
Sandra Lauridsen, Education Manager for Kids Country, which is part of the charitable arm of the East of England Agricultural Society, said: “We are passionate about helping children to understand food, farming and the countryside in the East of England, where we are surrounded by some of the most productive farmland and producers. It’s also a priority that we show children from all backgrounds the amazing career options in the agricultural industry, whether that’s in science, engineering, digital technology, or hands-on on the farm. We had a great day at The Bluecoat School, all of the children were so happy to be involved and very enthusiastic to learn – who knows, we may have met the next leading tractor engineer today!”
Sandra added: “We are proud of the strong links that we have with schools, farms and food producers across the East of England, and we would like to thank Bartlemas Farm, Bedfordshire for providing excellent, free range, rare breed sausage meat, Marriages Feeds for all of the flour for our pancakes, and Co-op Food for the eggs, milk, fresh fruit and vegetables, and much more that they donated to make the day a success – our thanks also to our chairman Tom Martin for bringing his great big tractor along!”
