The Topsham School

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Who we are

We have made many changes to our curriculum in recent years which has enabled us to introduce growing activities to the children. We now want to embed this and seek ways of giving greater ownership to the children and wider school community.

We aim to:

• Develop greater links with parents
• Network with other schools and organisations from both the local area and further afield
• Find outlets for the produce
• Develop plans and structure for the kitchen garden so that it will become a widely used resource

LATEST NEWS

February 2012

Topsham School has been really busy, we've now got a 'shop' (actually it’s a shed!!), at the front of the school to sell our produce and raise awareness of what we are doing in our curriculum. In the coming months we are going to be giving the children far more ownership of this - getting them to man it more, bank the money, set the prices, etc. The majority of the produce is still coming from our links with Highfield Farm which is a 10 minute walk away. Next half term we are linking up with another local school and taking a class each to the farm on a weekly basis - something we're calling 'Farming Fridays'. This is a really exciting thing for us to try - whilst there the children will be working in groups - one preparing lunch or an afternoon snack, another working in the Kitchen Garden, another setting up a camp - building fires, setting up tents and another finding out about the process of growing our own wheat, producing flour and then using the bread oven owned by the farmer to make rolls, pizzas and buns for the children to eat. We'll also be exploring the farm environment with help from the Devon Wildlife Trust and possibly hatching our own chickens (though we're not too sure about this one yet!). We're hoping that this will become a long term project as we'll be planting an area with wheat which we can then harvest, mill and then use, holding a sunflower growing competition and establishing a pumpkin patch so there will be many more joint visits in the future.

In the school grounds in 2012 we will be:

•  Creating another Salvage Garden as part of a Devon Wildlife Trust scheme (we are one of their  Link Partner Schools),
• Taking part in the RHS Budding Gardeners competition (we got Best in Show and Best Green Garden last year)- we’ll be growing  plants which will then be judged and possibly used at the Chelsea Flower Show!
•  Our very youngest children are making recycled pots from paper to use to grow some early peas.
•  We’re looking for other local community projects to support - last year we helped to create a sensory garden at the local Devon In Sight building which offers support for local blind / partially sighted people - in the coming months they might be holding some training here at school with a link with Bicton College.

School scarecrows!	School shop