Farm themed week
After our trip to Amners Farm lambing day last week, we just had to choose ‘farms’ for our themed play this week. We had a wonderful day seeing the animals and getting close to so many of them. Visiting places always inspires the children’s play. So here’s our farm themed week……
Making a simple barn
I asked Pinky and Boo what they’d like to do and they suggested making a farm. Ok, so I took a look in our box of recycling I keep for these occasions and pulled out a shoe box and brown paper.
The girls then started cutting and gluing the brown paper to the shoe box to make a simple small world barn.
We got out our box of small plastic animals to put in the barn. It was at this point I realised we didn’t actually have many ‘farm’ animals, so we needed to make some too.
Making Pom Pom animals
I got some pom pom balls out of the craft box, googly eyes, glue, coloured paper and scissors. I made a chicken for them, then Pinky and boo told me “we can make them ourselves” so the rest of the animals were down to them (with just a little bit of help with the cutting when they got stuck).
Here’s how they got on….
Ok, so they don’t look like the best animals ever, or the best barn, but it’s not about the finished product. What I love is that the children did it themselves, they thought about how to create their animals, they got creative, they had fun, they used their own imagination and created something for themselves.
They played with their barn and animals for a time, but probably had more fun creating them rather than playing with them.
Farm pictures
From the bottom of my craft cupboard, I dug out some animal stencils my mum gave me ages ago that we had forgotten about and got drawing. The children really enjoyed drawing round the animals and were loving creating pictures in a way they had not done before. We got through a lot of paper with this activity, but they enjoyed it and I think they learnt a bit about the shapes of animals and their features etc.
When BB came home from school and saw all the girls animal pictures he joined in, then decided to do something different. He drew a sheep, then got the cotton wool out and stuck the cotton wool all over it for his sheep picture. It was really effective. Then he taught Boo how to do the same. It was lovely to see them working together (totally unprompted by me!). They were both very proud of their sheep pictures!
Farm stories
On the same day, Pinky was obviously getting into the ‘farm’ theme, she decided to read some farm stories. She found her books and sat down and looked at them.
Pinky loves looking at books by herself now, she tells the story in her own words from the pictures. This is the first step to learning to read and she’s doing it totally unprompted.
So that was our farm themed week. Some of the final products were not the best, but it is all about the children having fun, being creative, using their imaginations, learning and exploring.
What have you been up to with the farm theme?
Karen I love looking at your posts, always full of great activities. I love this one x #minicreations
Thank you very much
Great that you used the animal cut outs and pom poms.
I love the pom pom animals, what a creative solution x #MiniCreations
Thanks, I was looking for something to use that was ball like
Love their concentration when doing the pompoms face! #pocolo
It was good
Grace & Lucas say – This is the best indoor farm EVER!!! We love it. High-5’s to you lil’ dudettes
Thank you