This month we are learning about being Down on the Farm. Farm life is a fun topic to explore. I love the activities and visuals that Mother Goose Time provides in our curriculum. Each week there are several inspiration pictures that they provide for the kids to inspire their art work. I love them because even after the children create their masterpieces with little to no outside prompting, I am able to file them away in my “story starter” file box. Sometimes we will pull out that box and choose a picture to help “read/tell” a story. Since the pictures contain NO words the child can be successful at creating a story that fits the photo. It is fun to see their creativity in action. And it is pleasantly surprising to see what their little minds can create from their interpretation of the piece.
Last week we discovered fun things about farm animals. Cows, sheep, pig, horse, and chicken. The kids enjoyed making animal masks and headbands, making a clean pig dirty, and playing a few games that involved different farm animals.
Here are some of their creations from our week of animals.
This week we learned more about life on the farm. We focused on the barn, tractor, silo, hay and straw, and mud.
Mud pies! The mud day was a big hit. We made “mud dough” and then made pies with them. We will add them to the dramatic play area once they dry to add to our “store” so we can buy some delicious mud pies. We used chocolate pudding in our dough so it smells super yummy.
On the silo day we had to do some research on what a silo is and what it did. I think that was a new word for everyone. We discovered that some farmers store food in them to feed the animals for the winter. They also found out that there are many types of things that can be stored in a silo. Wheat, corn, and oats are the ingredients that they could choose from to put on their silo art. In order to help with letter recognition, we also played a letter game, Fill Up the Silo. Everyone had fun spinning the spinner and putting on a piece of corn when their letter was hit.
The hay/straw and tractor happened on the same day. One of our friends goes to preschool 2 days a week and doesn’t like to miss out on our fun messy stuff, especially painting! The painting is their take on tractor wheels. With the straw and hay we brought out the little cows. They love the little manipulatives that comes in our kit. We will use them at table time/centers and sort, count, arrange and lots of pretending with them! The cows are brown and yellow. Half are big and other are little, perfect for pretending momma’s and babies. We fed the cows straw. Some of the kids made beds to put them in. One child remembered the poem we read earlier about the Little boy who fell asleep under the haystack. So we had to bring out the poster and sing along.
Next week we will learn about foods that we get from the farm. We will have a great time learning in many ways including play dough, patterns, and our favorite “Would you Rather?” game. Thanks for reading and we will see you next week.
Ms. Sally
Joyful Kidz 