Children's Poetry Competition

Woodlands Farm's writer in residence, Clare Best, organised poetry competitions at two local schools: Kirton Primary School and Middlecott School Kirton. Children wrote on subjects connected with the farm and with healthy eating. Many of the poems entered were written at Clare's workshops following school visits to the farm.

Gerard Benson, the well known children's poet and performer, and founder of 'Poems on the Underground', was competition judge and prize-giver. On National Poetry Day, October 6, he performed his own poems, read out the children's winning poems and awarded certificates and prizes at special assemblies at both schools.

Middlecott School Winners

Year 9

Recipe for an Animal Mad Farm

Ingredients
5 spare barns
2 male kittens
2 female kittens
1 female, 1 male dog (preferably Great Dane, this will make you a good prophet)
2 owls
10 highland cows (5 of each sex)
6 lambs (3 of each sex)
A box full of fertile duck eggs
A small lake
3 good friends
1 instruction manual How to breed animals
Good food supply
Good heat supply
A large house for you
2 sacks of character (laughter comes free)

Time needed: minimum 1 year

Method
Clean out the barns, make them warm and suitable for the different types of animals.
Put each breed into a different barn. The owls will squeeze into the dog barn.
Read the instruction manual and breed your animals. Keep some and sell the rest.
Sit on your eggs and when the ducks hatch let them have a barn and the lake.
Use the fields to let the cattle and lambs have some sunshine.
Keep the animals, yourself and your friends warm and fed. In the winter invite the animals in your home.
Dip into the character, spread it around equally and sit back, relax and laugh.

Paige Wilson

Middlecott School's Poems