Harvest
RE · Year 1–Year 6
Tap the display: sheaf, harvest loaf, corn dolly, tinned food.
About the harvest
A harvest display at the edge of a cut field, with six things on it to name. Tap the corn dolly and the board says it is woven from the last stalks cut and kept until the spring; tap the box of tins and it says what a harvest collection is for. Nothing is typed and nothing is dragged.
The display and the field are in one picture on purpose. What a school does at harvest is bring things in and give them away; how the harvest actually happens is the machine working across the stubble behind it, and the two belong on the same board.
Everything else in the picture is worth asking a class about even though none of it has a label. The corn on the far side has not been cut yet, which is why the combine is where it is. The rooks are over the machine because it turns up grain and insects. The tower on the skyline is the church the display is going to, and the ears lying on the cloth fell off the sheaf.
Harvest festival has no fixed date. It is held when the harvest is in, most often on a Sunday in late September or early October, and schools run their assemblies from late September through the middle of October. The first modern harvest service was held in Cornwall in 1843; the older festival, Lammas or loaf mass, was on the first of August, when bread from the first of the new wheat was taken to church.
Most harvest collections now go to a food bank. Church and school services collect tins and packets in the autumn, when a food bank’s shelves are at their emptiest after the summer holidays, which is worth saying to a class before they bring anything in.
The labels are off to begin with, so the picture is a question. Show puts all six up at once, and Next works round the display in order.
How to use it on your whiteboard
- 1Tap something on the display. Its name appears at the side and what it is for is written underneath.
- 2Tap it again to take the label off, or tap Clear to start over.
- 3Tap Next to work round the display in order.
- 4Tap Show to put every label up at once, for reading rather than testing.
- 5Ask the class what the loaf is a picture of before you tap it: the shape is the answer.
Questions
- When is harvest festival?
- There is no set date. It is held when the harvest is gathered in, which in Britain means late September or early October, and most churches and schools hold it on a Sunday or in an assembly that week. The older harvest festival, Lammas, was on the first of August.
- What is a corn dolly?
- A figure woven out of straw from the last stalks of the harvest. It was kept indoors until the spring, in the hope of a good harvest the next year, and different counties wove different shapes: the Kern Baby, the Kirn Babby and dozens more.
- Why is the loaf shaped like a sheaf of wheat?
- Because it is made from the new grain and taken to the harvest service, so the loaf is baked as a picture of where it came from. It is one of the oldest things in a harvest display and plenty of schools still bake one.
- What happens to the food that is collected?
- Most of it goes to a local food bank or a charity that feeds people. Churches and schools collect tins and packets rather than fresh food, because they keep, and a food bank is usually at its emptiest at the end of the summer holidays.
- What does a combine harvester actually do?
- Three jobs in one pass, which is where the name comes from: it cuts the crop, threshes the grain out of the ears and separates the grain from the straw. The straw is left behind in rows and baled later.