More than just a great day out......

Peterhouse Primary School making scaled 3D maps of Holkham Estate

As our visitors are enjoying their end of term visits we are also enjoying seeing some of the brilliant follow up work that they do back at school. Highlights include Peterhouse Primary making 3D models of Holkham Estate, George White Junior School making a film about their visit & writing blog posts, Northrepps Primary School posting on their blog & tweeting about their visit & some wonderful photos from Gaywood Primary School. Art, Design Technology, English and ICT have all been used in the classroom which is great to see as during the visits we also cover Geography, History, Science, Maths and much more.


We really enjoy seeing your work & photos of your visits so please email is some photos or send us a link to you blog and/or website via either education@holkham.co.uk or via Twitter @Holkham .

Key Stages Four and Five

Wildflower Meadow

Recently we have been delighted to welcome pupils and staff from Gresham’s School for two field study trips on the Holkham Estate. Twenty-eight A Level Biology pupils enjoyed a full day of field study, recording data on both the National Nature Reserve and the estate farmland. Our Education Coordinator, Will, led them on their field work around the sand dunes system and the grazing marshes. Here they observed succession of habitats and the conservation focussed management of the marshes, as well as the diversity of species and the importance of species-specific breeding sites. After a spot of lunch by the estate lake the keen biologists were shown areas of farmland that have been designated for Higher Level Stewardship, with borders and whole meadows of wildflowers being grown to attract pollinators. Transects of the different areas were taken and data recorded using the Simpsons Diversity Index. Later in the afternoon buffer zones and hedgerows were studied, demonstrating the importance that is given to conservation minded approach to farming here at Holkham.



Holkham Bay

43 GCSE geographers also visited us, this time to our National Nature Reserve and were given a talk on sand dunes management and conservation. The psammosere process of succession was investigated and huge amounts of data relating to species diversity, soil pH, inclination (slopes) and wind strength were recorded across the area of embryonic, yellow and grey dunes. It was great to see the pupils at work in what is such a fantastic environment for studying the geography of Norfolk.

We hope to welcome educational visits from many more secondary schools in the future. For more information on our secondary school and higher education programmes please contact us.

Open Farm Sunday

Open Farm Sunday

We were once again blessed with great weather for our annual event Open Farm Sunday. The event is part of a national campaign to educate people about farming and where our food comes from. Highlights of our event were the display of our machinery, sheep shearing, pedal tractors for our younger visitors and tours of our arable fields in our new trailer.

 

Trailer tours

The trailer is pulled by the late 7^th Earl’s first tractor he brought when he returned from South Africa to look after Holkham Estate in 1973. Compared to modern machines and old ploughs you can definitely see how farming has evolved and become a lot more technical.

 

We are very excited to offer our visiting schools the option of taking a trailer tour to learn more about where our food comes from and the crops which Holkham Farming Company grows.

Half Term Fun

Family fun

Tuesday saw glorious weather at Holkham and the park was very busy with visitors, a great many of whom came to learn the art of Pond Dipping from Michaela and Will. Eager young naturalists were soon kitted out with micro-mesh dipping nets, specimen trays, magna-jars and identification keys. After a quick lesson in pond dipping techniques, trays were soon being filled with an array of marvellous aquatic creatures and the children got down to work identifying what they had captured.

In the top layer of water there were thousands of water fleas, a sprinkling of water mites and good numbers of crazy little whirligig beetles. Our visitors were also astonished by the speed and paddling power of the lesser water boatmen.

The middle and bottom layers of the lake held the real monsters of the deep! Lots of blood-sucking leeches were found, amongst them some absolute whoppers. After seeing these, Will decided against going for a lunchtime paddle! Freshwater hoglice, mayfly, alder fly and damselfly nymphs were successfully identified and we also found lots of their casings, which they shed when they move onto the next stage of their lifecycles. One of the most popular critters was the caddis fly larvae, which had built their own little tunnel casing to live safely in while they grew into their winged form and hatch out of the water’s surface. They looked like little remote controlled sticks, creeping around the bottom of the trays.

Our brand new ‘Bug hotel’

Our first Walled Garden Discovery Day continued along the invertebrate theme as younger visitors helped us build the spectacular bug hotel as pictured above. They also went on a minibeast hunt & found lots of invertebrates lurking in the soil & underneath pieces of dead wood including woodlice, worms, ants, centipedes, millipedes and the gardeners’ worst nightmare….slugs!! Our visitors were also very green fingered & made their own plant pots out of newspaper before planting sunflower seeds to watch grow at home.

It was fantastic to see so many visitors enjoying the Hall, Walled Garden, woodland play area, cycle hire, lake activitites and exploring the parkland and beach over the half term. Now we are busy preparing for our busiest school term ever. Fingers crossed the sun shines for us!

Super Bloggers

Launching our brand new Super Bloggers Competition!

This week has seen the launch of our exciting new ‘Super Bloggers’ competition, which is open to all pupils who come and enjoy an educational visit with us here at Holkham. The challenge we are setting you is to come armed with your best blogger’s notebook & camera, so that you can take down all the details of your fantastic day here and capture the best moments on film, ready to write your prize-winning ‘Super Blog’!

Blogs should include a detailed description of everything you did while you were here - what you enjoyed most, new things you learnt and new experiences you had. You can choose the style you write in to make your readers really enjoy and remember your blog. Your articles can also include photos, diagrams, facts, quotes and funny stories. Individual or group blog posts are welcome too.

The Top 3 blogs from your school will each win a special ‘Holkham Super Blogger’ certificate and the blog judged by our Education Team to be the overall winner for your school will be published online, here on our Holkham Education Blog!

Also, the best individual Super Blog from all schools each half-term will receive a FREE FAMILY TICKET to Holkham Hall and Park.

For more information please contact the Education Team – education@holkham.co.uk or 01328 713112

Seaside Fun

Seashore ‘treasure’ sorting

On Tuesday, 20 Key Stage 1 pupils from St Andrew’s Primary School visited us for a day of beach and woodland activities at a very blustery Wells. The air was heavy and the skies very moody as the excited children arrived. Sure enough, within seconds the rain was hammering down – not beach weather at all! Quickly, the black clouds had cleared and the sun shone brightly down on us.

Pupils split into groups and were challenged to find as many things from the strandline scavenge list as possible. Before long buckets were filling up with shells, seaweed, driftwood and dead crabs. After lunch fortresses of all designs were built and decorated with treasure, moats had been dug and each work of art signed in the sand by our budding artists and architects. Despite the weather these children (and, it has to be said, their accompanying grown-ups) were made of tough stuff! Not a murmur of complaint was heard all day as they well truly immersed themselves into their seaside topic.



Luxurious bug house

On Wednesday & Thursday the Reception Class of Wells Primary School came to Holkham Park to explore the woods as part of their topic Science Lab. They went on a treasure hunt, looked for mini-beasts and learnt lots of interesting facts about them – did you know a worm can live for up to 10 years and it doesn’t have eyes? It moves round by feeling its way with lots of micro hairs on its body!! We then made some (luxury) bug houses to put our mini-beasts in.  One had a swimming pool made from a puddle of water caught in the tree, a trampoline made from spongy moss and the fine example shown in the photo a garden complete with a tent, camp fire, pond with ducks and a table and chairs!

Michaela & Will Education Coordinators

Park Life

Fallow Deer and the Monument

Last week pupils and staff from St. Nicholas Preparatory School in North Walsham visited us for a full day of challenging field work. The Year 5 & 6 pupils began with a morning of Team Challenge - team building exercises in our woodland area. Teams battled it out, crossing ‘Toxic Swamps’, limboing blindfolded under ‘Electric Fences’ and solving the mystery of the ‘Magic Cane’. Great fun was had and the children made super progress throughout the morning, strengthening their resilience, leadership and problem-solving skills.

In the afternoon the group used OS maps and learnt about the different symbols used to indicate positions of important landmarks and geographical features. They honed their compass and map reading skills, investigated grid references and finally mapped their own key features of Holkham park – including the mandatory deer!



Pond dipping tray

As the weather is warming up, so life underwater is beginning to get very busy. The lifecycles of our countless aquatic creatures in Holkham lake are now speeding up as everything awakens from its winter slumber. Testing the waters in readiness for this year’s first school pond dipping visitors (not because we love pond dipping ourselves!), our Education Team found a good amount of activity in the shape of masses of Water Fleas, several Mayfly Nymphs, some Meniscus Midge Larvae and a Freshwater Hoglouse. Soon we’ll have Water Boatmen, Dragonfly Nymphs and the amazing Cased Caddis Fly Larvae to get excited about. This activity is always one of our most popular and can be differentiated for all year groups and levels. Book up and come dipping!


Sue Penlington, Education Officer