Down on the Farm

We dug down deep this week into various items as we took an adventure 'to the farm'.  The children planted carrots in 'dirt' that was made of beans to shorted up our mess and then we 'picked' the carrots too. 

 We rolled dice and read the number of dots on them then looked for that numeral on paper corn and added a yellow sticker to cover that number and fill in the corn.  This was a fun math game we experienced this week as we also talked about items grown on a farm.

After working on the corn math we looked at another variety of foods that grow on a farm.  The children sorted the magnetic foods and placed them on a magnetic board into a variety of groups by either color or another similarity.

We read a book about the farm and animals that live there and then practiced making letters in some seeds to work on fine motor skills and pre-reading and writing activities all at the same time.

 After working on our letters in seeds, we worked on our large motor skills acting out various farm animals.  We were sheep, cattle, horses and chickens, etc.  Once we were done with moving around we painted cows and hung them in our classroom.  It is always wonderful to see the variety of spotted cattle up through this month as we keep talking about various animals.

While we hung up our cow pictures at school, we used our fingerprints and Q-Tips to paint fluffy wool on sheep.  Some of the children added two legs to their sheep while others added four and then chose where to place these legs and the head.  

Once we finished our sheep, we looked at kernels of corn and then placed them onto ears of corn in order to learn the parts of corn like ear, kernel, etc.

 By Friday we reviewed the terms related to an ear of corn and then created our own by assembling the kernels, husks and cobs.  The children were able to connect these parts with glue before moving on to match words with pictures while their teachers helped them sound out letters and words.

 After reading time we sang a few songs of life on the farm and talked a lot about what it would be like on the farm before making little pigs with curly pipe cleaner tails.

Once our pigs were in their cubbies we found out the 'balloon sheep' had escaped their pen and we needed to heard them back by collecting them all and bringing them back to the main circle time rug.

 We read other stories on Friday about life on the farm and then worked on our shape of the day and then played some games on the ipads.

 What's Coming Up?

• To keep up with our animal month we have finished the farm and are moving to the jungle for jungle animal fun.
  
  
• The Palatine High School Variety Show is April 19, 20 and 21st and is always a great time, feel free to check out the school's website for further details.