A Taste of Country Life for City Schools
‘Sara Ward, founder of Hen Corner, brings the countryside into your school. Sara uses her extensive experience and immediate, engaging delivery to offer sessions that inspire and delight. Children see the new National Curriculum brought to life as they discover first hand where their food comes from, explore lifecycles, discover the secret lives of birds and insects, learn about habitats and much more. Sara’s sparkling and memorable workshops will enrich your curriculum and open the minds of pupils and teachers alike.’ Chris Spruce, Executive Headteacher, Heathland Whitefriars Federation
‘Great, informative afternoon. We were made to feel very welcome, looked after extremely well and learnt enough and more in order to start our chicken journey at School!’ ‘Thanks so much for all your support.’ Sarah Schleich, Carlisle Infant School
‘Thank you so much for coming in and sharing your knowledge with the children. They were really excited to meet you and look at your equipment. We all learned lots – teachers too!’ Vicki Barrett, The Priory
We’ve been really pleased to welcome several schools to ‘Join us on the Journey’ in recent years. Be it Chickens, Bees, Life Cycles or Food Production, it’s been a privilege to support pupils as they experience something new and grow in their understanding.
It all began in June ’11 when the Head Teacher of a large London Primary School brought a colleague to one of our courses with the aim of introducing chickens to the whole school.
We then worked together to plan a strategy which involved sourcing equipment, working with the caretaker to prepare a safe area for the chickens, choosing chickens and training for staff and students.
The culmination was a day at the school where we introduced the chickens, ran sessions with the ‘chicken volunteers’, questions & answers with staff, assemblies with key stages 1 & 2 and gave out certificates to the students who were now trained to look after their new hens.
It has been a privilege to return to the school on other occasions to train new volunteers.
Since then we have:
Welcomed schools to Hen Corner for visits
Introduced chickens to other schools
Visited schools to talk about bees
Delivered hatching egg projects for the spring
Lead INSET sessions for staff
We can plan a bespoke programme, that may include any of the above, specifically designed to meet the needs of you and your school. Please see a recent school visit featured here.
Sara Ward has many years experience working with children and young people both in schools and within the voluntary sector. She spent many years overseeing the children’s and youth work at Bless Community Church, is the Vice Chair of Governors at her local primary school and has invested several years supporting the Advisory Board for her local Children’s Centres.
Schools that we have worked with include:
Carlisle Infant School, Hampton
Eversley Primary School, Enfield
Green Dragon Primary School, Brentford
Meadlands Primary School, Richmond
Strand on the Green Junior School, Chiswick
‘Sara from Hen Corner visited Year 6 in February to share her experiences as a bee keeper in an urban setting, discuss the science behind making honey and raise awareness of why bees are so important to our ecology. The children were fascinated by her presentation and asked lots of questions. It inspired them to find out more about bees and to think of ways to make our local area more ‘bee friendly’. We hope to do a follow-up visit to see the bee hives in the summer.’ Antoinette McGovern, Year 6 Science Teacher, St Paul’s CE Primary School, Brentford
‘Sara was a pleasure to welcome to The Holmewood School. Having already attended her fantastic chicken keeping course at her West London home, I knew our students would love her workshop. We are a small SEN school for high functioning autistic students and Sara instinctively knew the best way to deliver her sessions to a diverse group, differentiating accordingly from our youngest student of 7 years old to our oldest at 19. I was delighted with the amount of knowledge the students gained and I am currently looking into Sara delivering a bee keeping course in the summer term. I can’t recommend Sara highly enough.’ Naj D’Silva (Senior Teacher leading SMSC and personal development).
If you think we can complement your curriculum in any way, please do get in touch by completing the form below.
Please note that fees are quoted by the half or full day.
Hen Corner 
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