This was the first time we had attended a countryside day. We hoped that the children would benefit from the experience of being close to farm animals. They had studied habitats, and being able to watch the peregrine falcon and the barn owl followed up on this. We are also an accredited Healthy School, so the cookery tent, where their knowledge of fruit and vegetables was reinforced, was helpful. The fishing was also good, but we didn’t have time for everyone to have a go. We spent a long time looking at the otters as we had studied Tarka the Otter. Many pupils had never seen wool being removed from a sheep and they began to understand how wool is processed. And they had great fun watching the shearer at work. There was lots of hands-on learning, which was good. My only disappointment was that there were no large animals, like cows.

The weather was perfect, and parents who came with us enjoyed the day out.

The children were already asking about next year when they got back to school.