The Learning Curve

Farm Storytime for Preschoolers

Storytimes about farm animals are a dime a dozen, so let's add another one.

In addition to our normal welcome song, we sang "Good Morning Mrs. Perky Bird"
Click to hear and watch the song

Our Mrs. Perky Bird tweets when squeezed so we started off talking about how animals communicate.

Book: How To Speak Moo by Deborah Fajerman
This is a short book about cow language - the "moo". Loud moos, soft moos, sleeping moos, singing moos...

Flannel Board Activity and Song: "Do You Have A _____ Cow?"

Set up for this was to print off and laminate different color cows and attach felt to the back.

Pass out the cows to the group before the song. When their color is called in the song and they come to the flannel board, invite them to share their favorite moo from the How To Speak Moo story with the room.

(Tune: The Muffin Man)
Do you have one green cow
one green cow, one green cow
Oh, if you have one green cow
Come put it on the board.

Continue singing until all the colored cows are on the board.

Song: "Five Little Pigs"
(Tune: Five Little Ducks)
Five little piggies rolled in the mud (Hold up 5 fingers)
Squishy, squashy, it felt good (roll hands)
The farmer took one piggy out (thumb over shoulder)
Oink! Oink! Oink! That pig did shout (talking motion with hands)
4....
3....
2....
1....
No little piggies rolled in the mud (hold out hands)
They all looked clean and felt so good (frame face with hands)
The farmer turned his back and then (wag finger)
Those pigs rolled in the mud again! (roll hands fast)

Puppets: I Went to Visit A Farm One Day
Rhyme words: I went to visit a farm one day
I saw a cow a long the way.
And what do you think that cow did say?
Mooooo Mooooo

For this, I have different animal puppets hidden in a bag. During the second line, I pull out an animal and let the kids answer with animal sounds. We do this with about 4 animals at a time. Click to hear the rhyme

Book: Driving my Tractor by Jan Dobbins and David Sim
An old tractor drives along the countryside picking up different animals along the way.

There should be a CD in the back of this book to play- it's the words to a catchy tune. Click here for a youtube version of the song. For our storytime, I pulled out the bubble machine and while playing the song on our speakers, the kids were able to dance and play in bubbles.

Other rhymes and songs you can use...

Bingo
There was a farmer had a dog
And Bingo was his name-o
B-I-N-G-O
B-I-N-G-O
B-I-N-G-O
And Bingo was his name-o

There was a farmer had a dog
And Bingo was his name-o
(clap)-I-N-G-O
(clap)-I-N-G-O
(clap)-I-N-G-O
And Bingo was his name-o

....

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep
Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir; (nod head "yes")
Three bags full (hold up 3 fingers)
One for the farmer (hold up 1 finger)
One for his dame (hold up another finger)
And one for the little boy (hold up third finger)
Who lives down the lane.
Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir; (nod head "yes")
Three bags full (hold up 3 fingers)

Did You Ever See A Farm?
(Tune: Did you ever see a Lassie?)
Did you ever see a farm?
A farm, a farm
Did you ever see a farm?
Many animals live there.

There's a horse who says, "Neigh!"
A cow who says, "Moo!"
A pig who says, "Oink, oink!"
And a rooster -- "cock-a-doodle-doo!"

On A Farm
(Tune: London Bridge Is Falling Down)
Animals live on a farm
On a farm, on a farm.
Animals live on a farm
With the farmer.

Cows and pigs...
Goats and Sheep...
Hens and Chicks...
Mules and Ponies...

To The Farm
(Tune: Twinkle, twinkle little star)
Chickens, kittens, piglets too
Donkeys, horses, cows that moo
Fish that swim down in the pond
Ducklings quaking all day long
All these things you can see
If you go to the farm with me

💚💛💜

This is the relay race played during our I Survived book club meeting for I Survived the Attack of the Grizzlies, 1967. A thorough (ish) overview of that months meeting can be found here 😁

In the book, two teenage girls are attacked by two grizzly bears on the very same night at Glacier National Park. Prior to this, no one believed bears capable of such violence. Rangers theorize that these attacks were encouraged by park employees and visitors baiting bears, leaving trash and feeding bears from cabin porches.

In this game, groups are gathering food that bears find naturally in the wild . Here goes...

Objective: Gather the most food items to bring back to your teams table aka "cave".

How To Play: Each team was given a single pair of "bear claws" (wide tooth combs from Dollar Tree). Playing tag team style, players use bear claws to gather food items to bring back to team table. Food items were: moths (Styrofoam balls), meat (beanbags), berries (pom pom balls). Any items that fall on the way to the "cave" does not count and must remain on the floor.

The table contents are hard to see in this picture, but there were 3 separate tables with the different foods on them.

When all food items have been picked from the table, whichever group has the most amount of items wins.

Each team had their own table to dump their food after retrieval.

Preparation: Prep work involved collecting items and assigning names to them.

Grizzly bears primarily eat plants (berries, roots, grasses, leaves), meat (moose, caribou calves, squirrels, fish) and even moths. These were the items I settled on..

Berries - I picked out all the blue and purple pom poms.

Meat - Shark bean bags were from left over from our shark attack I Survived meeting, hearts were in our supply and I quickly stitched together some deer heads together.

Moths - You read this article, right?
For a different element, players could opt out of gathering meat and berries with their claws and attempt to throw a moth into the bears mouth during their turn instead.

Players stood behind a taped line to throw. These were worth double points at the end.

Here's the bear I made. It was printed out, colored and attached to cardboard. The mouth was cut out and a gallon sized plastic bag was stapled to it - this was to know what balls made it into the bears mouth. Cardboard was given legs to help it stand.

Each team had a different bear to toss moths into. Team bears were differentiated by different colored eyes, e.i. the green teams bear had green eyes.

And that's basically the gist of it! I'm a little distracted typing this up so I probably shouldn't publish this. ... I'll make a note to re-read this later.

💚💛💜