15 of the best farm books and activities I've found

There are a lot of awesome children's books about the farm and farm animals, and there's no way I can talk about ALL of them - but here are some of my favorites, both old and new.

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Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle 
If you have preschoolers and have not yet met this book, you absolutely must find it!  The copy at our library is frequently checked out, because it includes farm animals and trucks - 2 all time favorites with the preschool crowd.

Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell
I love Farmer Duck for lots of reasons, not the least being the thankless nature of his tasks (no-one working with small children ever does thankless tasks, do we?).  I think the best part is that Duck answers with a single word every time he's called, "Quack!"  The kiddos love to join in and help me read/perform this one, and I love that!

Rooster's Off to See the World by Eric Carle
This is an oldie but a good one, any children's book collection should probably include something from Eric Carle's amazing list of titles!

Barnyard Banter by Denise Fleming
Another artist whose work is always amazing, Denise Fleming does a lovely job of combining simple rhyming text, animal noises, and an easily found but sort of hidden goose on each page.  Little ones love finding the goose and of course, making the noises.

Big Fat Hen by Keith Baker
Perhaps this is actually a tour of some of my favorite children's book artists, because Keith Baker is another  whose art is amazing!  In each of his books there is something hidden on each page, in this case the word HEN is on each hen in the book.  If you have a child who loves combing the pages looking for hidden treasure, you'll fall in love with all of Baker's work.

Color Farm, by Lois Ehlert
Bold colors, cut outs in the pages, clever use of shapes - fantastic!  This would pair beautifully with the tangram activities I suggest further down this list!

Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein
I first heard about this book from a child who had heard it elsewhere, and couldn't stop talking about it, for weeks.  Anything that engages a child that long is well worth checking out, and I was not disappointed!  Bonus feature, if you have students who blurt, or need to work on self control, this book is a gentle way to bring that to their attention in a fun way.

Pete the Cat Old MacDonald Had a Farm, illustrated by James Dean
You can't help but sing along with this song, and adding Pete the Cat makes just about everything better, right?  Do we cry? Goodness no!

Old MacDonald Had a Woodshop by Lisa Shulman
Old MacDonald is a woman in this book, and she has a fantastic set of wood working tools that make awesome sounds.  This one will easily be a class favorite for the great combination of the familiar tune and new sounds and motions you can make with it.

Wonky Donkey by Craig Smith.  Click here to watch a performance of the song that the book is based on - I don't know about you, but I think I need the printed words to make it all the way through!

Hedgie's Surprise by Jan Brett
Okay, this is definitely a tour of farm books by awesome picture book artists!  Like most of Jan Brett's books, this one is a slightly longer picture book read, and the illustrations are phenomenal!  I like to point out the action in the frames around the main picture - Jan Brett always includes extra information in these smaller illustrations - it's a great way to engage students further with the book, makes reading the pictures easier for the youngest kiddos, and shows that we get information in picture books from both the pictures and the words.  Working on narrative skills? Students can use these extra pictures to tell more of the story than the text alone provides.

Of course, no matter how many amazing books we read to our students, we also need great follow up activities!

I adore these mixed media cows - an idea inspired by this post (in French). I explain how we made them on our class' Artsonia page. This project lends itself to a discussion of squares, circles and rectangles, worked fine motor skills as we worked with scissors, crayons, watercolor paint and crayons and frankly looked awesome as a bulletin board!

We combined math, art and literacy for this next project:
I'm really happy that I recorded each child reading their page, and made a read aloud of our class book.  What a neat treasure to look (and listen) back on! If you haven't recorded your students reading yet, having them read their page of a class book is a simple first step - and with only a few words (which they wrote!) for each child to read, it feels more like an opportunity to show what they can do than a challenging task to complete.  Isn't that how we want our students to feel about reading?

A couple more ways I like to include math learning is with farm tangrams (see how I use them in this youtube video!)...

... and hands on math games.

If your students are beginning to read, you'll want some sight word rich text for them - maybe like this one that's available in my TeachersPayTeachers store:

Do you still need more ideas about the farm?  Check out my farm Pinterest board!  Thanks for stopping by!

On The Farm!

I don't know if I've ever seen the kiddos as excited as they were today!  They've been looking forward to visiting the farm where one of their classmates lives, and he's been talking about it for weeks.  Lots of parents and grandparents joined us, transporting their students so we could all make it in one trip.

Ms. Julie and I worked hard to gather all the kiddos together, and to get quiet enough to listen to directions - and the farm rooster crowed loudly.  The kids laughed and laughed!  I tried again and again, but the rooster had impeccable comedic timing, and kept the kiddos laughing.  I thought we were going to need to cook him up for lunch!  :-)

When we calmed down and sat in a big circle, our hosts brought around their bunny, Dolly, for us to hold and pet.  He was so soft!

 A few minutes later we met two kinds of chicken, a Silky and an Americana.  They were very different!

 There were horses and a donkey outside for us to meet, and a nanny goat and her almost grown son.  Last year, when we visited, he was just a kid, but he's a big boy now.

 We returned to the barn to see more animals, and sat sweetly to wait for the horses.

 Steele was a favorite with a lot of the children - he's a one eyed, pirate horse.  He's a gentle giant who lost one eye to disease this year.  We fed him treats, so he really liked us!

 Canton is a miniature horse, much less intimidating for the children as he was just about their height.

 One of the things the children remember doing last year, and were very excited to do again, was to throw rocks and dirt into the pond.  It's the little things in life!  Fortunately for us and for them, the ducks were on the other side of the pond hiding in the grasses.

 Our hosts had collected a bunch of no-longer-fit-to-eat eggs, and we got to have an "Easter" egg hunt.  The kiddos hid the eggs, and then collected them again.

 And where do you think we wanted to hide the eggs?  In the grass?  Not so much.  By the rocks?  Yes, but just a few.  No, we wanted to hide the eggs in the sand pile.  Buried.  And then climb the pile.  We're hoping we found them all, and our hosts don't discover more eggs a month from now! (Pee-ew!)

 We were all sandy, so we got blown off with the air compressor and the leaf blower.  You can see the wild and crazy joy in their eyes as they played those games!

 I considered mailing the kids home... okay, not really.  There was a giant cardboard box by the barn, and anyone who's ever met small children knows that they are like kittens, cramming into cardboard boxes at every opportunity.

 Finally, we piled up on the mower and four wheeler for a group picture, before loading everyone into cars to head back to school.

We had a blast, met lots of animals, and checked out farm equipment.  As one of the grandparents with us said, "This is the best field trip.  You can't make any better fun than this."  Thank you so much Mara and Jerry for sharing your morning and your farm with us!

P.S.  One of the parents that went with us has also blogged about our trip - from a parent's perspective.  Check that out here: http://www.pondfam.com/blog/2014/05/ !

Baby Chick Count book and game

 Today we finished making a really cute counting book, which the kiddos are loving!  We did this with our Easter and Spring activities, but it would also go well with a farm theme, or could be modified to go along with a counting rhyme, like Five Little Ducks.  I want to share, it's so adorable!

I saw the idea on pinterest, and even although the original site is in Russian, the pictures communicated beautifully. 

 To follow up, I wrote numerals and number words on index cards, and added yellow dots to the back to make it self checking.  I put the cards in a basket with a large orange pompon (momma hen) and a dozen small yellow pompons (chicks).  The kiddos loved it!  Some of our preschoolers need to practice counting with 1-1 correspondence, as well as reading numerals.  The older kiddos who are reading worked with number words.  We'll keep this center out for a while!