Farm Week



This past week turned out to be even more exciting than usual.  Our unit was "The Farm" and after a very fun week of discussing Dr. Seuss, I knew I had to bring in some extra fun.  Little did I know, some of the other teachers were helping me out!  With that said, I have to start with our "Fabulous Fun Friday".   The four-year classes were talking about animals and pets last week and Mrs. Emily had one of her friends stop by and talk with us about puppies.

(The amazing Mrs. Emily is on the left!)

She brought wonderful pictures and told us all about mother and daddy dogs and they care for their puppies.  Then she showed us her surprise!

PUPPIES!

 

We even got to pet them and give them a little preschool love!  Of course everyone went home and told their parents they wanted a puppy!   OOOPPS!  THANKS MRS. EMILY FOR INCLUDING US!!!!!!

 

Back in our room we busy talking about the letter "R".  We worked on one of my favorite art projects - a red recycled rabbit!

He/she was really easy to make thanks to some recycled toilet tissue tubes and lots of red paint!  The eyes are stickers (everyone had to find a matching pair of eyes!), the feet are cut from cereal boxes and he/she has a cotton ball tale.  SUPER FUN!

Talking about the farm is fun but it is really hard to explain to children the art of milking a cow.  So instead of talking, we milked a cow! 

Yes, that is me holding a rubber glove and the cutie milking the rubber glove is my buddy Max!  I pricked tiny holes in some rubber gloves and my glass pretended to milk a cow.  It was great fun, messy but fun!

I'll continue our week in reverse order and show you what happened in our class on Thursday!  I've had a box of interlocking cubes in my room for over a week now.  Mostly the students just connected them together and that was fine, it was a good work out for our fine motor skills.  But, on Thursday I got sneaky!  Before they got to class I made a pattern with the cubes and set it on the table.  Of course that was the first thing everyone saw when they came in the door.  The next thing I knew the entire class was sitting the floor trying to make their very own patterns! 

I had to crop this picture to show you the SMILE on JB's face!

HE WAS SO PROUD!!!!



 



I had to pry some of them away from the cubes to work on our art project, but since we were cutting with scissors, no one really minded. 

As you can see, the students wrote the word, "cow" and cut the cow's spots all by themselves!  (Just a note:  I don't insist that my class write, I simply encourage it and let them give it a try!)

Writing words seemed to be extra fun this week because we also wrote the word FARM on our hand print animal project!



 

I especially like this farm scene. 

The child didn't want the sheep to be with the horse and cow!

This child wanted his fence to be broken!

 

I don't do many of the same projects year and year.  I always seem to find something that I think would be more fun.  BUT, one of this week's art project was so much I do it every year!  First, we paint a pink pig -

 

Then we had some mud!  

Okay, it is really brown paint, oatmeal, sand and glue!

 

And we have some really muddy pigs!

My class loves to cut with scissors!  I have never had a class that gets so excited about cutting.  We made a quick horse this week and it was the perfect opportunity to hand them the scissors

 

First, we wrote the word HORSE.

Then we cut some strips of black paper.

OH BOY, it is time to glue it all together!

I LOVE THEM ALL!

All in all, I must admit we had a great week!  Thanks again for visiting with us and I hope you will stop by again soon!







Old Mrs. Karen Had a Farm!

"Old Mrs. Karen had a farm!"  EE-I-EE-I-O!  With some fun here and some fun there, everywhere some fun, fun!  Old Mrs. Karen had a farm, EE-I-EE-I-O!"  Okay, that is enough singing for a Saturday!  Can you tell we talked about the farm this week?  It was great!  We have mooed, oinked, neighed, quacked and clucked all week (not easy with a sore throat I might add).  We also had a great time, let me show you.  Our Monday we talked about one of our favorite barnyard friends, the pig!  We started off with an activity that I have done for several years now, our muddy pigs!

 We painted our pigs with our regular paint and let them dry.  It doesn't should like a whole lot of fun but if you "oink" while you paint, you start to giggle!  After they dried, we added "Mrs. Karen's Special Mud"!  It is a fun mixture of . . . .

Everyone mixed up their own "mud" and slapped it on their pigs!  Each child had their own method for applying the mud.  There was the "I don't want to get my hands dirty" method -

The "let's just use one finger" method - 

And then there is MY favorite, "LET'S DO THIS!" method - 

The "how" part didn't really matter, it was the "fun" that counted!  All-in-all our pigs were "perfect"! 

We also spent our circle time talking about pigs and how they use mud to cool off.


Tuesday turned into an "R" day.  We talked about letter of the week and rabbits!  If you are a follower of my blog you know that I really enjoy "reusing" items in my classroom (and at home too!).  I don't believe in spending a lot of money to have fun.  Our "R"ed "R"abbit is a perfect example of this.  We started with a good 'ole toilet tissue roll and painted it red.  

After it dried, we added a face, some ears and a tail - instant "Red Rabbit"!

Our circle time was spent talking about rabbits and everyone tried to "hop" everywhere we went!


Wednesday's are always a fun day for us because we get to spend 30 minutes in the "big" gym with my good friend, Mrs. Nancy.  We call it "Wednesday Wiggles".  It really is a preschool version of a Physical Education class.  There are about 40 children in each class and we work on group activities and following instructions.   I love when everyone runs in the door screaming "is it wiggles day?".  And since wiggles is so much fun, I have to make sure my classroom time is fun too.  SSSOOOOO, this Wednesday we talked about roosters.  We cock-a-doodle-dooed ALL day and spent our circle time talking about roosters.  We also made a wonderful rooster to take home.

He was quick and fun.  (Quick note:  Next time we will make him red!).


Thursdays are always busy for us, but not too busy to talk about horses!  We galloped along  as we neighed and made our hand print horses.

I love hand print art!


Finally, it was Friday and time for REAL fun!  I don't think anyone was disappointed with this week's "Fabulous Fun Friday"!  We started with a recycled sheep project.  This was GREAT for our fine motor skills and everyone had a fun time.  First we wound the yard (your choice of colors of COURSE!) around a piece of old recycled cereal box.

Next, we added a head and some clothes pins for legs.  Instant recycled sheep!  

Our Auburn and Alabama Sheep!

Our blue sheep!

Since we were talking about sheep, we headed to the kitchen to make our snack.  We made sheep cookies, of course!

Okay, I know, you have to use your imagination on these, but we loved them!


Our science experiment of the week was all about the letter "R"!  We made raisins and rice dance!  

I'm not sure where I found the original experiment but, Dancing Raisins is a great link.  I changed it up a little by adding a little red food coloring and using rice too.  We did the experiment at around 10:00 a.m. and by 1:00 p.m., the raisins and rice were still moving!  Everyone loved them!


We had a busy week!  Next week is all about the letter "Z" and the zoo.  It is our last week before our Spring Break so I will be pulling out a bunch of new ideas.  Thanks for visiting with us and I hope you will come back soon.


This blog post was shared on 
 

"Q" and Farm Week

Oh what fun we had this week! I must admit that I worried about letting my class down after our wonderful "P" week, but I think they were surprised. This week was all about the letter "Q" and the "Farm". See my newest picture for "Q". It is my favorite "Q"uarterback, Auburn University's Neil Caudle! THANKS NEIL! We were pretty busy all week but we managed to squeeze in a wonderful "Dr. Seuss Day" on Wednesday. Our week started off by heading to the kitchen. One of our former teachers had left all kind of junk items behind when she parted and I inherited them. LUCKY ME hahahah, or so I thought until I realized some of her junk was pretty neat. One thing she left was a package of little capsules from the Dollar Store. There were like 18 in a package. You put them in water and when the capsule melts you are left with a surprise. Inside our capsules were farm animals (okay, we knew this because the package told us)! The look on the children's faces were priceless! They were so excited! Everyone was screaming and giggling. GREAT little science activity at no cost.

We also spent the day Monday making a wonderful little duck, no photo :( because we all couldn't wait to get them home :) We also spent the entire "quacking"! Yes, I said QUACKING, a lot of noise but OH SO MUCH FUN and a great way to learn the "Q" sound.


Our Tuesday was spent working on a lovely little cow (yes, we MOOed while we worked). Tuesday was also a fun day because we got out of scissors and did some "Super Fun Scissor Work" (again, yes, that is what we actually call it). Everyone cut their own spots for our cows. Some cut just a few, while other just kept on cutting. (please note the "hairbow" that my sweet little "A" just had to make for her cow - VERY creative!) Either way, they were MOOOOOvarleous!

Wednesday of course was good 'ole Dr. Seuss Day! See post below for all our fun.
Thursday was a fun pig day. We had the best time talking about the different sizes of the circles we used for our pigs. And yes, just in case you were wondering, we DID oink all day!

A special thank you to my co-worker/Emily's Mom, Amanda for taking a picture of Emily's pig. Everyone was so excited to show their pigs to their families that I didn't get a picture before we left.

Friday is one of my favorite days. We head to the kitchen to whip up a fun and not always nutritional snack. This week was definitely fun! WE ATE A PIG! I know the pigs should have been round, but WOW this was a really big cookie, so we cut in half. This is my favorite cookieI never tell them where to put items, I only tell them what the items are. For instance, on this project I said, "here are the pig's eyes". Gotta love 'em!

We also made the cutest little sheep on Friday. I really love this one -
"R" said, "it's a Mommy sheep, she has on lipstick"!

A quick note - this week a couple of our art projects got out the door before I actually had time to photograph them. I was rather sad when I realized it but then I thought, this is what happens when our day is too fun and our time is too short!