KS2 Maths activities that can be carried out before, during or after a school visit.
Curriculum area: Numbers including fractions
Activities:
- Use the legs/ears/eyes of animals to: Count in steps of two and four; Become familiar with multiples of two and four e.g. how many ears have 8 cows?
- Compare numbers of animals on different farms: Say which farm has more or less of an animal; Estimate and calculate the differences; Round numbers of animals up or down to the nearest 10 or 100; Convert numbers of animals into percentages of the farm totals.
- Divide a set of animals into the available fields as equally as possible eg you have 56 sheep and 4 fields - how many sheep in each field?
- Find halves and quarters of numbers of farm animals, amounts of crops.
- Calculate how much the farmer will get for a particular quantity of produce or livestock at a given unit price.
- Collect and compare prices of eggs and milk in different shops. Record differences on a graph. Work out percentage differences.
- Convert prices of farm products to another currency.
Resources needed:
Accurate information about farms is available in the farm profiles on the main FACE website, or the information can be invented!
Curriculum area: Measurement
Activities:
- Read a timetable of the farmer's day and answer questions.
- Design a timetable for a farmer's day using am and pm or a 24-hour clock. Use a calendar to design the farmer's year.
- Work out problems around times and milking cows eg if you have 40 cows and 10 milking machines and it takes 5 minutes to milk each cow, how long will the whole milking job take.
- Design a yearly timetable for seed planting using information gathered from seed packets.
- Estimate the measurements of fields.
- Convert measurements of fields into kilometres/metres/centimetres.
- Using maps of the farm, follow a farmer's day and design the shortest route around the farm for the farmer.
- Find weight of potatoes in kilograms/grams.
- Compare weights of potatoes - kilograms vs. pounds. Work out some equivalent weights. Measure quantities of milk in litres and millilitres.
- Round measurements to the nearest kilogram or litre.
- Measure milk in pints and litres. Work out how many pints there are to a litre. Measure height of plants and record their growth on a chart.
- Which sort of egg has the largest volume? What is the difference in volume/circumference between different sizes of egg?
- Take the temperature of different bottles of milk using a thermometer in degrees centigrade. Record findings on a table or graph.
- Find perimeters of fields on a map.
- Find area of fields using areas of rectangles and areas of right-angle triangles.
Resources needed:
- Milk Potatoes Eggs
- Farm maps
- Weighing scales with metric and imperial units Measuring jug with metric and imperial units Metre rule
- Tape measure Thermometer
- Seed packets
Curriculum area: Statistics
Activities:
- Use a table showing different numbers of animals on different farms: Read information from table; Re-create data as different types of chart (pie, bar, tally, pictogram); Write questions about the data; Answer questions about the data.
- Input data onto a database. Give children numerical information about the animals and ask them to design a table to present the information.
- Find the mean, median, mode and range of the numbers of animals.
- Gather data eg favourite cheese, drink or animal, and choose the appropriate graph to represent information on.
- Use examples from farming to explore probability eg the cows will be milked today (very likely); the wheat will grow two metres high (very unlikely); it will rain this year (certain!).
Curriculum area: Ratio and Proportion
- Activities:
- Use a selection of grains and pellets from the farm. Use a recipe, with ratios on, to create a mix of food suitable for pigs. Wheat:barley:pellets:oats 4:2:7:2
- If sheep need to have a lower proportion of wheat and higher of barley can they adjust the recipe to match that? Can you now make this feed mix?