In the first week of May Eldon Infant school brought their five Year 1 classes to Forty Hall to take part in the ‘Micro to Mega Plants’ session. Almost none of the children had visited Forty Hall before and they were all really excited to visit and get out into the grounds in the warm weather.

The children played a ball game to start with to name plant parts and learnt actions to go with each plant part and represent its function. They then explored the beautiful Walled Garden using magnifying glasses to look closer at flowers and identifying plant parts such as thorns, stamens, petals and stems.

Back inside children went to The Long Gallery which they were told was their ‘laboratory’ and acting as ‘artists and scientists’ they used digital microscopes, traditional microscopes, hand-held microscopes, photography books by artist Rob Kesseler and art materials to complete five different challenges to allow them to examine plants, seeds and pollen closely.

Afterwards staff from the appropriately named Violet Class said that the session was ‘engaging and very informative’ and Sunflower Class said it was ‘a fun day…the children learnt a lot’. Pupils from Blackberry Class said ‘the plant lesson was so fun’ and they had learnt ‘interesting facts’.

We hope to see all these flower-fans up at Forty Hall again soon and would like to say how impressed we were at how carefully they used the delicate microscopic equipment and treated the flowers and plants outside!