Farm Animals

Fall is the perfect time for farms, as we had just learned about fall being harvest time. Here's what we did these past 2 weeks:

Dramatic Play

A farm of course! There's a small garden and a variety of farm animals (stuffed, puppets, and hats), plus a few costumes, so the kids have many different opportunities for playing farmer or animal. They had a lot of fun and were surprised to find non-typical animals like mice and an owl.
Thank you, Target, for all the cute felt veggies and costumes from the after-Halloween sales! I'd been waiting a whole year to get out this tractor costume, and it was a huge hit!
 



 

 



Blocks

Barns, animals, tractors






And a variety of puzzles (which they are really liking and getting into this week)


Art

Feather painting


Finger painting

We used the art table to make butter to have for snack, then played play dough

Glue and collage materials


Small Manipulatives

Farm counting puzzle
(I loved that once it was finished, I did the search and counting with the group who did it, then many others came over to search for and count the animals too)




Farm animal magnets

Farm animal dry erase cards from Totschooling 


P is for Pig dot page and flat marbles, lacing cards


Farm words and pictures for silly sentences on the magnet board. They could match the words to pictures since the pieces fit, but they'd have me read the words so they could make silly sentences. I also watched some move the words around and just make up what they said, which is great because they're making a connection of spoken word to written word.




Writing

Farm stickers (requested out more than 1 day)

Farm stencil

twistable crayons

Sensory Table

Cornmeal and farm animals. They ended up adding cups from the playhouse for scooping fun.


Large Group

Our word was domestic and each day we talked about the difference between domestic and wild animals. We learned the song Down on Grandpa's Farm.

Day 1, we read At the Farm and matched puzzles of what products come from farms (ex. milk from cow, wool sweater from sheep, honey from bees, etc.) We also sang Old McDonald had a farm.

Day 2, we read Barnyard Hullabaloo and played animal sound bingo. I had the bingo cards out the next week and they played over and over the next 2 days! I was surprised at how much they enjoyed the game!


Day 3, we read From Egg to Chicken and learned the names of baby animals on the farm. We played a game where the kids had a picture of the baby animal, and they had to find its matching parent picture that I'd hid in the room.

Day 4, we read Cock-a-doodle-Hooooo. We had a big pile of toy animals and sorted them by wild and domestic.

Small Group

Week 1, my group played a harvest counting game from Kelly's Kindergarten. We worked on counting and matching the numeral.
The other group colored a barn animal page.


Week 2, my group counted and graphed farm animals on a page by Totschooling. We used dry erase markers and they marked off each animal they counted to help keep track. Then more counting as they graphed. Then they worked together on 1-10 farm puzzles.
The other group drew their favorite farm animals in their journals. I wrote their words as the other group did their puzzles.

Happy Halloween!

Dramatic Play

We kept out the pumpkin patch from last week, but added pumpkin buckets and dress ups! The dress ups were a huge hit and I spent the whole hour helping kids change in and out of every costume. Then they'd "trick or treat" around the room for toys and things.

On Halloween, they came in their own costumes, so it was just the pumpkin patch without costumes.

Blocks

Alien counting puzzle


Sensory Table

We had record low temperatures this week, and since we don't go outside when it's below 20 degrees, I bought the table in! It was our fall mix from last week, with some added Halloween surprises!


Art

Beads and pipe cleaners


Halloween collages


Small Manipulatives

Spider lacing cards


Bug counting puzzles


Witch magnets




Writing

Halloween stamps


Halloween stickers

Snack

Mummy dogs (hot dogs they wrapped with strips of crescent dough)

Pumpkin oranges and banana ghosts for a healthy Halloween snack


Large Group

We sang 5 Little Pumpkins and learned the word "spooky." We talked about spooky things at Halloween just being pretend things, so they could remember something they're afraid of is not real.

Day 1, we read There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat, and retold the story using character headbands.

Day 2, we read The Spookiest Halloween Ever, then did our Halloween centers
(thanks to my parent volunteers for running the centers!)

Center 1: My group read Spiders Spiders Everywhere, which is an awesome math book that covers counting to 10, and position words. Then we made our own counting spider books up to 5, and had to count as we stamped spiders in their books.

Center 2: The kids at the block center used all the blocks to build a gate for the 5 pumpkin buckets. Our dad helper also encouraged them to build the tallest towers that could hold a pumpkin on top-awesome large motor and problem solving skills!

Center 3: My husband played "potion master" and used test tubes to help the kids make baking soda and vinegar potions. They only had primary colors available and had to remember how to mix them to make secondary colors if they wanted them.

Center 4: Our parent helper read 5 Spooky Ghosts and had the kids count the ghosts on each page. Then they did a ghost shape worksheet, where they colored the shapes she told them to find, to help review shape names.

Small Group

We only did this on day 1, since on Halloween we had several small group rotations!

My group played a pumpkin counting game and did a pumpkin dot to dot to practice counting to 10.

The other group made pictures with Halloween stickers.



***Counting! Do you see a common theme of counting here, and during fall week? It's because it's an important skill we're working on now. Rote counting, which is just repeating the numbers in order, and mostly, one-to-one correspondence, which is counting objects or pictures. We are practicing using our fingers and touching each thing that we count, or using our fingers to move the objects we are counting, to keep track of what's already been counted. We are working on numbers 1-10. We are also working on matching those to their corresponding numbers, or the concept of numeracy. This is a lot for 3 year olds! But they can do it, and we'll be practicing lots and lots in many different ways, in every theme, so they are on their way to becoming amazing mathematicians!
Here's an excellent article on the subject: https://www.education.com/magazine/article/preschool-number-recognition-counting-easy/

Fall

My favorite season for preschool because there's just so much fun stuff to do! Here's what we did:

Dramatic Play

Apple Orchard/Leaf Raking







Fellow teachers: I've tried many different ways to "hang" the apples each year. Each way has its pros and cons. This year I just did balls of masking tape and it worked great for a day, but each day after pulling and placing the balls so many times, I had to replace it, which wasn't a big deal. If you've tried this in your dramatic play areas at school, let me know how you did it! This idea is one of my most pinned, so I'd love to see how it's working for you.

Then added the Pumpkin Patch after 2 days. Also, foud the cutest banners and apple bags at Target that I had to have!! Perfect for this center. I love fall!





Blocks 

Wood train sets


They loved it, so it was an option all week, along with the 4 seasons puzzle and usual blocks.

Art

Tissue paper squares and liquid starch painting


Spin art, love how these turned out! It's a popular and busy center.

We used the art table to make our homemade applesauce for snack, then got out dot paints.

Small Manipulatives

Pumpkin shape-matching mats (perfect review of last week) from Totschooling


Fall Pattern Cards


Lacing pumpkins and Flat marbles and pumpkin and apple dot pages from Totschooling


Magnet Board was Ten Little Apples Up on Top. I LOVE that this board made them curious about the book, because I got called here over and over to read this, and it either was followed by asking me to read something else, or them recreating the book on the magnet board.


Reading


Writing

Fall stickers


Fall/Halloween stencils

Texture rubbing plates


Snack

Day 1, we tasted red, yellow, and green apples, colored our favorite to hang in the tree, and graphed our results. (picture below in large group section)

Day 2, we had grape juice and grape jelly made from our own backyard grapes, and learned how they're juiced.

Day 3, we made and ate our own applesauce.

Outside

The sensory table was an "apple pie" mix with oatmeal,  cinnamon sticks, and toy apples/pom poms, plus cups and scoops. It was fun to watch them make muffins and cookies.


After 2 days, I changed it to this sensory fall mix (thanks Dollar Tree), that we also used the next week, so they had 3 days with this one. They loved sifting through for "treasures" (anything plastic and/or shiny).

Large Group

We learned the songs, Round and Round the Seasons Go, Leaves are Falling (they love this one because they get to throw leaves), and 5 Little Pumpkins.

Our word was deciduous, which is my favorite word to teach all year, and the one they often remember the best because it's so fun to say. Each day we watched a different Sesame Street video to help us learn the word.

The deciduous rap

Deciduous word on the street

Day 1, we played a leaf rhyming game and matched rhyming words. Raking Rhymes from Kelly's Kindergarten.

Day 2, we read about pumpkins, counted pumpkins, and decorated little pumpkins.

Day 3, we took a fall walk to find deciduous trees and signs of fall.

Small Group

My group made karo syrup leaves for our tree, and the others made leaves with the leaf rubbing plates.


My group counted apples with my apple counting mats (we're going to be practicing this A LOT), the other group colored an apple life cycle page. Counting mats are from Kelly's Kindergarten.

I can't tell you the guilt I feel when I send home what looks like a worksheet, but there's always a reason for anything I do. I honestly didn't care if they learned the apple life cycle by coloring it, because I doubt they did (worksheets don't work), but this group is still learning to work together without the teacher, and other tasks I've tried have required my interventions, leaving my group waiting. I value the small group learning time to help teach hard concepts on an individualized level, so I need the other group to be able to work alone. And the coloring went great!