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.