What are school farms and what are they for?

It is vitally important for the future to be able to teach the little ones to have values ​​on the environment. To be able to instruct them so that they have sustainable habits and create awareness for respect for the environment and its conservation.

Sometimes, in the many activities of environmental education, Adults end up being more surprised than children. Since there are a lot of data, curiosities and other aspects that they thought they knew, but when they are taught, they are the opposite. How important can it be for children to enjoy nature?

Environmental education activities

An example of an activity for children to learn more about their environment and the origin of many of the products they consume is visiting farms. When the children find out that in order to obtain 22 liters of milk when a cow is milked it takes about 10 minutesEven adults are more surprised than children.

School farms are a type of environmental education that It favors the teaching of the child and the acquisition of awareness for the care of the environment. Children raised in the city are unaware of many more aspects than we think. In general, even adults who develop in urban environments are unaware of many aspects of nature that can help them conserve it. In this case, we refer to the education of “need to know in order to conserve”. When a person is aware of the importance of a certain natural resource, space, animal, etc. An intrinsic need arises to conserve it, take care of it, preserve it ... in order to continue maintaining the service it offers us.

The transmission of knowledge about the environment is not solved by visiting the countryside or living rural life during the weekends. In order to introduce values ​​and knowledge in children, it is necessary that they live their own experiences and relate to their environment personally. We can teach them the basics about fruits, vegetables, animals, farms, etc. But nothing like that the child lives it in his flesh.

School farms

School farms emerged in Spain nearly three decades ago as a response to a society that concentrated on cities and wanted to reconnect with nature. People who have developed in urban environments are able to move fluently through the city. However, they have lost their connection to nature and the rural way of life. It is not too strange that children raised in cities ask where the eggs come from or if the horses give milk. Recovering rural culture and nature for our children is important so that they have a real vision of the world in which they live.

All the activities that a child can do on a school farm differ from those they do in the city. Getting away from technologies, screens, mobiles and video games is also healthy for them. In addition to knowing aspects of nature and being able to have fun, they do sports outdoors and it supports their immune system.

In these farms the animals are taken out so that the children can touch them: donkey, cow, horse, rabbit or goat. Most of them discover for the first time the touch of the fur of these animals or their voice. They learn firsthand what a braying or mooing sounds like, and it is no longer just a word learned in school. They collect eggs, watch a cow being milked, ride horses, water the garden, plant seeds or till the land.

In this way the contact with nature and this personal experienceHe is very productive for his way of life and his environmental awareness. Learning through experience is one of the objectives of these rural centers, such as promoting contact with nature, the animal world and rural areas or for children to acquire knowledge about natural transformation processes, where milk and cheese come from. that we buy in the supermarket; how to make a wool loom or how and with what natural ingredients a sponge cake is made, etc.

Requirements of the school farms within the legality

-A facilities that guarantee the safety of the children who visit them.

-Maintain the health and well-being of the animals it houses.

-Have a license to develop their activity.

-Have monitors specifically trained for environmental training activities with children.

As you can see, the school farm is a very good environmental education tool for the very young and not so young.