What a wonderful day we had at Airfield Farm yesterday! First Class were full of excitement heading off in the morning on the LUAS toward Dundrum. We took part in the Breakfast Club programme organised by Airfield in conjunction with the LUAS and had a truly memorable day.
We spent much of the morning in with the hens. We learned how hens are the closest living relatives to dinosaurs and we observed carefully their eyes and claws noticing the similarities with a T-Rex! Collecting their eggs was great fun and we managed not to drop any. It was interesting to look into the hen houses and see the high bars where the hens roost at night. We learned that hens don’t notice when they are full and so their food is offered to them through a clever feeder, only being released when a hen stands on the tray.
After feeding some hungry goats (and inspecting their rectangular pupils!), we then had a tour of the farm. One group visiting the dairy, meeting a pregnant cow, a pig and her piglets and seeing some new lambs. The other group seeing some ewes with their lambs. The children learned that ewes are very protective of their lambs so we kept our distance. The big new word this group learnt was ‘ruminant’, which is used to classify animals that digest grass in their four stomachs. Did you know that cattle, sheep and goats are all ruminants, giraffes being the largest ruminant?
After all this learning and fresh air we had certainly earned our breakfast! The eggs we had collected earlier had been boiled and were ready to be eaten. After setting the table we had some lovely boiled eggs, fresh bread from the bakery and a cup of jersey cow milk from the dairy.
Before heading back toward school we listened to a talk about LUAS safety, learning how to stay safe and what to do if we found ourselves stranded on the platform or left behind on the tram.
We had a super day. We gave big thanks to Airfield and LUAS for organising such a well run day. Thank you very much to all the parents who helped out and those who offered to accompany us, it was a big adventure for first class travelling together on the LUAS!
Here are some happy photos from the day 😊
