Bringing Farm Books to Life

After a decade of collecting children's books, I have quite a few, so I'm usually able to find some books in my stash that work with our theme. Sometimes we also get books from the library to go with what we're doing, but this time we had enough on hand. Trip loves to have me read to him, but he has his favorite books, and isn't always interested in me introducing new ones. This has been getting better recently, but he has to be in the right mood. With a little work, I was able to read him all of these books and he has discovered a couple of new favorites.

We also brought these books to life by acting them out while we read. Trip's bath toys came in handy for Five Little Ducks. We had the mother duck and her five little ducks.

This is a great book for practicing some simple math concepts. The five ducklings go away. Only four come back. The four go away, and then three come back. This continues until no ducklings come home. The mother goes looking for them and they all come back. This concept was still a little difficult for Trip, but using the rubber duckies helped.

Going to Sleep on the Farm is a beautiful book in which a little boy is picking up his toy animals before bedtime and asks his dad how each animal goes to sleep. This is definitely one of Trip's new favorite books and he enjoyed putting each of the animals to bed in the barn.

 

The Grumpy Morning is a cute story about a day when the farmer slept in. The animals have been complaining that they are hungry so they march into the house to wake up the sleepy farmer.

Trip helped line up the animals and make their hungry noises.

Bringing books to life by acting them out with toys (or puppets, paper cut-outs, stuffed animals, etc.) is a great way to get little ones more involved in reading and to give them a love for books.

Chicken Playdough Mats

I found these playdough counting mats from Making Learning Fun. Since they are fairly small, I was able to fit two on each page. I used the numbers 0-5.

Since there was a blank page behind the numbers 0 and 1, I also printed the chicken magnet page to go there. 

Trip wasn't so interested in this activity the first time we tried it, but the nice thing about having laminated materials is that we can save them for another time and keep trying. We got two eggs on the 2 chicken and then he decided he was done and started putting the playdough away.

Bunny Sandwiches

Growing up, my sister and I loved it when we got to make bunny sandwiches. Making them is one of those childhood memories that has stuck with both of us. It was a fun lunch for anytime, but was especially great when we had friends over.

Mom would cut circles out of bread, put out some spreads, and make a tray of toppings. We each got two bread circles, one for the face, and one that we cut in half to make the ears. We would then spread our bunny with cream cheese or peanut butter. Next, we got to choose from carrots, raisins, sprouts, bananas, sunflower seeds, and whatever else Mom put out to make our bunny's face.

I knew I had this picture somewhere, and searched high and low for it. I finally found it in the second grade pouch of my "School Years" memory book. My friend Celine and I are showing off our bunny sandwich creations. Just seeing this picture made me smile for hours.

Fast forward a couple of decades, and I figured it was time for Trip to have a bunny sandwich. I had hoped to make bunny sandwiches when Trip had some friends visiting, but it didn't work out, so we'll have to save it for another time. Trip was plenty happy with this bunny, though.

I only got one photo of it before this little boy couldn't wait any longer to eat his lunch.

Little Lamb Lunch

Trip sure enjoyed this easy lamb lunch.

I cut a large flower shape out of a slice of bread,

then spread it with cream cheese.

I broke mini marshmallows in half to make the wool. A mini chocolate chip eye, raisin ear and mouth, pretzel stick legs, and lettuce grass finished it off nicely.  

Farm Tot Pack

I found these great farm printables from 1+1+1=1. There are lots of options, so I chose the ones that I thought Trip would enjoy the most. If I catch him at the right time, Trip does really well with these activities and seems to have fun with them.

He liked matching the cards to the animals on the grid. I made words to go with this for us to use in the future.

On this particular day, he asked to do this activity. He started off well, 

and then suddenly decided to put the grid on his head, so it was all over and the silliness began.

I thought this matching game was really cool since it had cartoon animals to match with pictures of animals. We had a lot of fun making animal sounds with this one.

 The heads and tails puzzles were another of Trip's favorites.

 The tractor size sequencing was fun too.

I printed the Barnyard Colors mini book for Trip to color.

He liked finding the color that each page called for and making sure that the animal was colored in.

There are many more great printables from 1+1+1=1, so be sure to check them out!

Farm Pancakes

We purchased some squeeze bottles, which have made making shaped pancakes much easier.

Trip had fun with this pig.

He also liked this cow, especially since it had a raspberry tongue.

Farm Sensory Table

Trip's water table transformed nicely into a farm and he really enjoyed the results.

I filled one section with wood shavings and the other with a mix of steel cut oats, wild rice, and the bottom of a couple of other bags of grains. I also filled a bowl with glass beads to make a little pond.

Then, the animals came to live on the farm.

Finally, it was all ready for Trip to wake up from his nap.

As soon as he saw his farm, he was ready to play.

Soon, the pond was filled in with grains.

Trip enjoyed scooping "hay" from place to place and feeding his animals.

The farm became more and more of a jumbled mess as the two weeks went on, but it didn't matter because Trip was having so much fun.

Farm Thematic Unit

We just finished this farm thematic unit and have had a blast with it! Check back for the next couple of weeks to find out more about each of these activities.

Trip enjoyed his water table being transformed into a farm.

We did several fun matching games,

worked with playdough mats,

and did some coloring.

We also made our farm books come alive by acting them out with Trip's farm animals.

Trip got some special meals too, which he always enjoys. He had a pig pancake,

a bunny sandwich,

a cow pancake,

and a lamb lunch.

Trip also got to help Daddy work on the chicken coop that he's building for us. He was a great "gofer" and liked hammering and pretending to use the drill.

For more farm ideas, you can check out my farm theme board on Pinterest.