All About Farm Animals

Welcome to October!  I can't believe we have already completed 4 weeks of school.  Time flies when you are having fun!  As Kelly mentioned in her Sunday email, we are excited to begin our new theme of the month, "On the Farm." This week we are all about farm animals.

At the touch and feel pool, Ryan and Bristol began their day playing with all sorts of animals, big and small that were both from a farm and not from a farm.  We talked about lizards, turtles, goats, pigs, cows, snakes...some looked like babies, some looked like mommies.

During our morning circle, we had to switch our month to October, which was a little bit confusing!  We continued to sing the same songs which is helping us to learn our good morning song, calendar concepts, and weather.

In keeping with our farm theme, all of our centers were focused on farm animals.  We played with a farm animal shape sorter, a farm tractor carrying 6 different farm animals that made their specific noise, a soft barn that housed several plush farm animals that also made noises, a farm animal puzzle, and we built a farm house using a set of farm blocks.  We sang the song "Old MacDonald" using a special chart with picture cues that matched every word in the song.  We found the corresponding farm animal figurine to go with the specific animal that we sang about.

 

For Literacy Circle today we read, The Very Busy Spider, by Eric Carle.  This popular children's book follows farm animals as they each try to engage the very busy spider in their favorite activities.  However, the spider is always, "very busy spinning her web."  This book targets a variety of different language components.  It focuses on what each farm animal says and does, and its repeated lines aid in memory and language acquisition.  It also allows for a million different questions.  As I read the book to Bristol and Ryan, we used additional picture cues that matched the farm animals in the book.  Using two pictures at a time, we answered the questions, "Where is the horse? What does the horse say?" etc. We found the pesky fly and the spider on each page and felt the bumpy web as it got bigger and bigger.    When we finished the book, we went to the art table and colored our own books called, "Where is the spider?"  We had to make a choice by pointing or verbally requesting between two colors that they  wanted to use.  We verbally labeled each shape and used hand over hand assistance to trace the shape where the spider was located.

As the grand finale of our language circle, we watched a short video about farms and farm animals.  We learned that we get milk from cows and experienced what it might feel like to milk a cow using a rubber glove poked with small holes as the utters, and we "squeezed the wet milk" out.  Bristol and Ryan LOVED this activity and were totally focused for the entire lesson.  

It was a super fun day with farm animals!  Look forward to some soft, fluffy sheep on Thursday and a fun-filled music class with Ms. Gretchen and Ms. Kiley.