Infants (4-7)
Tel: 01833 627242
Email: info@thorpefarm.co.uk
Fitting in with the National Curriculum science of Key Stage 1 (4-7 yr olds) a trip to Thorpe Farm can help illustrate the following areas.
Growing Plants
Children can explore the site and discover as many plants growing in as many different places as they can including;
• The Lake Area
• Woodland
• Grassland
• Hedgerows
• Stone walls
• Paths
• Crop land
Introducing the idea of plants as living things that grow and change.
Worksheets available to download
Basic Awareness of the animals
Here are a few of the basic kinds of creature here at Thorpe Farm and their characteristics
Birds of prey
These birds have a strong bill which is sharply hooked, with fleshy cere across the top, through which the nostrils open. Their legs and feet are stout, with long sharp claws; hind toe opposable. Their wings are large. Falcons have no crop.
Sexes usually similar; female larger than male. Powerful, strong, winged fliers that live almost entirely on animal food. Falcons make pellets of waste in their gizzards and regurgitate them.
Reproductive rate is low; clutches small; incubation and rearing periods long.
Deer
Deer have antlers that fall off every year, and new ones grow, covered in skin called velvet. The antlers are made of bone, unlike cattle horns, that are made of hoof material-keratin. Antlers are only on males, except for reindeer. They are ruminants, so digest food in 4 stomachs, and by chewing the cud. Like cattle and other ruminants, they have no top incisors so use their tongues to eat. Deer have hollow hair, unlike cattle.
Horses
Horses have high crowned teeth, including incisors, but no canines. They have one hard hoof on each leg and probably some horses had three on each at one time. They bite the grass they eat, then chew it with large jaw muscles and good molar teeth, they have one stomach for digestion. Gestation is about a year. The young are at foot for a further year.
Goats
Goats are in many breeds, some bred for milk, some for meat and some especially for their wool. Goats’ milk is higher in butterfat and protein than cows’.
The goat is a browser, eating hedges, paper, your clothes, if you let them! as well as grass.
They are difficult to recognise apart from sheep. But the tail of the goat sticks up and the sheep’s down. Also the goats horns grow up and back, whereas the sheep’s grow out sideways and back. Male goats wear beards. And the forehead of the goat is convex (bulging outwards), but the sheep’s is concave.
Life Processes
THE SEVEN LIFE PROCESSES
1. All living things move
Animals move their whole bodies to get from one place to another.
Plants turn towards the light and their roots grow down into the soil.
2 All living things reproduce
Animals have babies.
New plants grow from seeds.
3 All living things are sensitive
All living things respond to changes. Living things notice changes in their surroundings and react to them.
* Eg. Plants grow towards the light.
* Eg. People react to the temperature around them.
4 All living things need nutrition
* Food is used to provide energy.
* Green plants make their own food using sunlight.
* Animals eat plants or other animals.
5 All living things excrete
* Waste substances must be removed from the body.
* Plants and animals both need to get rid of waste gas and water.
6 All living things respire
* Plants and animals use the oxygen in the air to turn food into energy.
7 All living things grow
* Babies grow into adults.
* Seedlings grow into plants.
