Make butter.
Team up children for a butter-making contest. Divide into groups of no more than six. Have each group sit on the floor in a small circle. Give each group a pint jar with whipping cream. Show children how to shake the jar while counting to ten and then pass to next child. Start each group at the same time and see which group makes the butter form first. When most of the liquid in the jar is gone, pour the butter into a strainer and rinse with cool water. Add salt to taste. Then let each group enjoy its butter on crackers.
Examine raw eggs. Then poach, scramble, soft-cook, and hard-boil them. Compare.
Examine feathers. Note difference between tail and wing feathers and downy fluffs. See if feathers will float. Talk about why they float. What are feathers for? (to keep birds warm or cool, to help ducks float on water) Use a magnifying glass to examine feathers.
Paint farm scenes. Fingerpaint with "mud" (chocolate pudding)
Class-made book and class graph: Our Favorite Farm Animals
Field trip to a farm.
Buttermilk Chalk Pictures
Using hands or brush, cover paper or cardboard with two or three tablespoons of buttermilk. Dry hands and then paint with fat, colored chalk. It dries and does not rub off easily.
Hens, ducks, and turkeys all lay eggs, and eggs are the best way to teach dozens and parts of dozens. Let the children make eggs out of clay or paper. They can buy and sell eggs and then use them to pretend cook.
Read Hattie and the Fox by Mem Fox. Divide the class into 5 groups and assign
each group to be an animal. As you read the book again, have the students fill
in the animals’ comments. Everyone can be the cow at the end and moo the fox
right out of the barnyard.
What could be more farm related than milking a cow. This hands on activity really builds those
muscles in young hands. Take a rubber glove (thicker is better) and pierce 2-3 fingers with a
large needle. Fill the glove 1/2 way with watered down tempra paint. Tie off at the wrist and
attach to one side of a paint easel. (This becomes the udder of the cow). Next decorate
your easel to look like a Holstein cow.
Read "The Milk Makers" to your children to help them understand how milk is made and processed.
Be sure to cover the area (& about 2 feet around) under your cow with paper to prevent excess
milk being sprayed on the floor. Children should wear smocks made from garbage bags
(so they cover the entire child). Let the children milk the cow by pulling down on the fingers
of the glove. This creates some interesting "milk" paintings on black paper.
Setup two trays, one decorated with a barn scene and the other which is decorated like a zoo.
Use toy animals that come from a farm and a zoo and the children sort them.
Take an extra large box, (dishwasher or refrigerator work best & most appliance stores let you have
them for free!) and have children "paint a barn". Water down tempera paint and it will go a little
farther. Have the children use real painting tools like rollers, wide brushes and paint pans.
Have them decide where doors/windows should go and outline with white. Once paint dries have an adult
cut slits with an exacto knife.(If you slightly score where the doors are they will bend more easily)
Play ideas: Have children pretend they are their favorite animal; Pretend they are the farmer,
what will they feed the animals; "Farmer in the Dell"~change to "Farmer in the Barn" Have fun
creating!
This is something to do if a farm trip is out of the question and your students are begging.
The way is a pretend farm trip. Tie apples- (Or red tissue paper) onto something, like the handle
of a cupboard, and cut animals out of large pieces of construction paper, and do several things like
that. And, if it is possible, put a bit of straw in a wagon for hay rides. I did this, my children
loved it, and the principal thought it was very cute!
Pig Musical Maraccas-
Take two clear plastic large glasses and fill them with rice and tape them up together.
Then take construction paper and cut out pigs ears, eyes, nose amd mouth.
Glue these all on to the front of the cup.
Then you can play old McDonald had a farm and play the maraccas to the music.
Kids love playing with what they make.
Mystery Farm- Students will each receive a picture of a barn that they can color and then they will glue down on a piece of white, or any color they choose, paper. Then students will pull back the doors of the barn so that they can draw or cutout animals from magazines that would live in the barn, then close the doors and make those sounds and have classmates guess what you drew behind your doors.
As a great ice breaker for the first of the year, try having students match up in pairs
by the type of farm animal they are. The object of the game is for children to locate the
animal that matches their own by making animal sounds. If a child is a cow, she moos until
she hears another cow mooing. Then they match up. Play the game until all the animals have
been paired up. Have a good list of noisy animals on hand -- sheep, pigs, horses, donkeys,
ducks, geese, etc. For non-readers use animal picture cards (such as animal lotto games use)
or whisper the name of the animal in the child's ear. Make sure you assign two of every animal
so that the children can find their match! This also works well as a Noah's Ark game.
Pigs in the Mud
Cut out a pig out of construction paper and have children fingerpaint the pig with chocolate pudding.
Idea submitted by: Virginia. Thanks!
Farmer in the Dell (different lyrics)
Submitted by Sharon--Thanks!
The chicken laid an egg..
The chicken laid an egg..
Hi-ho the dairy o
the chicken laid an egg.
The cow ate some hay..
The cow ate some hay..
Hi-ho the dairy o
The cow ate some hay...
The sheep said, "baaaaa"
The sheep said, "baaa"
Hi-ho the dairy o
The sheep said, "baaa"
The pig squealed and oinked
The pig squealed and oinked
Hi-ho the dairy o
The pig squealed and oinked
The rooster chased the hens
The rooster chased the hens
Hi-ho the dairy o
The rooster chased the hens
The farmer plowed the field..
The rabbits jumped and hopped...
Also the students can dance to the chicken dance song..
Use an overhead projector to make any coloring sheet bigger and better. Copy them onto a
transparency. Blow them up on to a piece of cardboard. Cut them out paint them or let the children.
When you hang these on the wall, they come to life. This can be done with anyhing. Have fun.
Dinosaurs are really cool done this way.
Idea submitted by: Tammy---Thanks!
Taking Care of Pets
Kimberly sent in her thoughts on pet care and love:
Well I think of my idea as a professional way -like when we first got our pets me and my sister
they would run away and be scared then after a couple of days later they will get use to you .
me and my sister have alot of experiences of animals. We take care of them like my grandpa's says
how you treat your pets the same they will treat you back and that's how I learn from my grandpa to
treat everyone equal because they will treat you back.
Thanks, Kimberly for your wonderful
thoughts! How I wish everyone felt the same way!
Set up your classroom into a farm using a tablecloth and draw a farm
as the backdrop. Cut out a shape of a horses head and tape it to a chair and
children can ride the horses backward. Cut out pig noses some children can
be pigs. Ducks in the pond- using a hula hoop, get some rubber ducks and set
them in the hoop and the children can pretend to feed the ducks with cut
out bread. Milk the cow using rubber gloves. Hang the gloves from a cardboard
box using a stool and a bucket. Tearing newspaper for the haystack- the
children will have a lot fun playing in the hay. The day at the farm will be
great.
Thanks, Arlene, for the wonderful ideas!!
Find a picture of a barn (good size) if not hard glue to a piece of poster board, this is your book cover. Make sure you have
cut out the barn so it looks and has the shape of a barn. Then you are going to cut about five construction papers in the shape
of your barn. Also cut five pieces of primary story paper. The hard cover goes first then alternate the paper and
construction paper. On the primary paper you put different words, one per paper that relates to the farm. Have the children
write the word under yours and then draw a picture at the top of the word. On the construction paper you will glue
diffrent poems, songs and fingerplays dealing with that word... example- word-FARMER-kids draw a farmer, the poem is
FIVE FRIENDLY FARMERS.
Thanks, Helen, for the great idea!
Muddy Pigs
Take pink construction paper and predraw a pig shape leaving off the curly tail. Have the child cut out the pink pig shape.
Take the pink pig shape and add a curly tail by using a pink pipe-cleaner that has been wound around the child's finger.
Attach it to the pig using a hole punch, slipping one end through the hole and twist to secure. Now put the pig shape on a
covered table and add brown finger paint. The child is to finger paint "mud" on the pig. You will need a sheet of construction
paper for every child. This is really a fun project and then I made a great bulletin board using all the pigs to make a pig pen.
Idea submitted by Michele--thanks!
Milking the Cow
Nickie writes, "We got an old saw horse and covered it in black material with white spots and made a cow head out of paper. We then purchased rubber non latex gloves and filled them with milk. We then taped the udders to the bottom of the cow and each child had
a turn milking the cow into a bucket. The children loved it." Thanks, Nickie!
Waxpainting of ducks, Sandprinting of horse
Rajalakshmi sends in this great idea--thanks!! Ducks In an A4 size construction paper make outlines of few ducks (duck family) papaduck, mama & Babies with white waxcrayon, give them to the child and make them paint the paper with diluted blue paint and sing the following rhyme:
"Have you seen the baby ducks swimming in the water? Father, mother, baby ducks, Grandpapa and grandmama? Have you seen them
flap their wings swimming in the water? Father, mother, baby ducks, grand papa and grandmama?
Horse
Draw the outline of a horse in a piece of construction paper. Sieve the sand to remove the stones. Give the child the glue-- make
them apply on the body leaving the eye, let them sprinkle the sand . Make the eye wth black sketch.
Horsie, horsie don't you stop
Let your feet go clippity clop
Your tail goes swish and feet go round
Gallop, gallop homeword bound
Sorting of the animals
Hafsah sends in this great idea--thanks Hafsah!!
Get a some toy animals such as wild and farm animals. Then get 2 shoe boxes each labeled 'Wild' and 'Farm'. Let the children decorate the boxes. Then, encourage the children to sort the toy animals accordingly in the boxes.
Barnyard Collage
Mary sends in this great idea--thanks!!
Copy many different graphics of animals, tractors, farm machinery, barns, etc. Provide big paper and allow kindergarten or first grade children to create their own farm. They can orallly describe their farm or write about it.
Farm Animal Acrostic Poem
Almee sends in this excellent idea--thanks!!
Think of farm words that go with the letters.
e.g. Dog, Owl, Goats, Stable
F
A
R
M
A
N
I
M
A
L
S
Mother Hen Lays Eggs
Arlene sends in this great idea--thanks!!
Get a big basket and shape it like a chicken. Different colorful art materials can be used to make one. Prepare some boiled eggs and then put them inside the chicken (basket) and then cover the basket top with a cloth.
Then you can ask each child to get one egg from the chicken basket and tell them to hold the egg with care so they won't break.(Don't tell them that they're boiled eggs!) In this activity, children will learn about obedience and caring.
The Farm of the Future
Taylour sends in this fun idea--thanks!!
Make a coloring sheet with 4 farm animals on it. Don't have anything else on the page but the 4 animals. On the 4 animals do noat have anything on them,just draw the outline, DO NOT draw eyes, mouth, nose, ect.Just the outline. Kids will then draw in the backround that they choose. It is going to be crazy, because it is the future. So there could be flying pigs and flowers in the sky. Then, on the animals they could put 3 eyes, 2 mouths, and 4 noses. It can be the FUTURE! My teacher from second grade did this activity with me many years ago. And everybody had a blast with it! It was the funnest thing I ever did in second grade!
Cotton Ball Sheep
Miss Tara sent in this fun idea--thanks!!
This works great for my toddlers at daycare! Parents love it too!
Paint child's hand with fingerpaint or let him press it onto an ink pad. Then press onto a piece of paper to make a handprint.
When the print is dry, let the kids paste cotton balls onto the palm part of the print. The fingers make the legs and the thumb makes the head!