|
|
|
Week 1
A basic
knowledge of farm animals is needed before the higher level activities can be
taught. I would do the following
activities until the objectives have been met before starting the harder
activities.
Objective:
Student
will learn English pronunciation of various farm animals.
Student
will identify animal when asked the name in English.
Materials:
Farm animal pictures copied from the Internet (with the help of the
students. Sites listed below).
Farm animal pictures copied from “Farm Animals” from Creative
Teachers Press.
Tape of the English and German pronunciation of the name of each farm
animal.
Name card for each of the farm animals.
Procedure:
Helper will say German word and English word for each picture as they
show it to the student.
Student will mimic helper in English pronunciation for each picture.
Student will listen to tape of English and German pronunciations of the
name of each farm animal.
Helper will guide student through animal Internet sites.
The addresses are:
http://discoveryschool.com/schrockguide/aged.html
http://magickeys.com/books/farm/
http://www.kidsfarm.com/wheredo.htm
http://www.execpc.com/~byb/indexa.html
http://viking.stark.k12.oh.us/~greentown/farmunit.htm
Week 2
or when objectives of Week 1 are met
Points
to remember:
Reading
with a group enriches children’s oral language development.
In the
following activities the students will explore, investigate, analyze, and
discuss topics such as:
Animal sounds and actions.
Baby farm animals.
Food from animals (milk, cheese, eggs).
Mammal Characteristics vs. bird characteristics.
Past and present life on a farm.
Hand-on,
integrated activities include:
Making “peek-a-boo” barns.
Dramatizing and singing songs about favorite farm animals.
Making life-size scarecrows.
Using the sense of smell to match “mothers’ with “babies”.
Learning how to square dance.
The activities will emphasize thinking, speaking, reading and writing. The activities can be done in any ord
Reading
and Language Arts:
Rosie’s Walk—Show the students the book “Rosie’s Walk” by Pat
Hutchins. Examine the cover and
have the students predict what the book might be about.
Read the book. Discuss if
the students liked or disliked the book and why.
Read it again, using a pointer to reinforce the left to right convention
of print and the fact that the story is in the print.
Discuss the illustrations. Brainstorm
to make a list of farm-related words. Obtain
a tape and book of the story. Have
children listen to, and read along with, the tape recording.
Encourage them to record their own reading of the text.
Give each child a blank book with the words from “Rosie’s Walk”.
Have them illustrate the book.
Riddles and Rhymes—Ask pairs of students to dress like farmers and
present memorized, animal-related Mother Goose rhymes, such as “Little Bo
Peep”, ”Little Boy Blue”, “My Black Hen”, “To Market, To Market”,
“Goosey, Goosey, Gander”, and “The House That Jack Built”.
In addition, invite students to take turns playing the What Am I? Game,
where they think of an animal and act out clues about that animal.
For example, a child could give the following clues for a cow:
I walk on all four legs (while child demonstrates)
I eat grass
I say m-o-o-o-o!
I give milk
Show and Tell—Discuss with students various farm products, such as
eggs, milk, cheese, wool, chicken, vegetables, and grain.
Ask each student to bring a farm product from home to share with the
class. It can be an actual product or the container the product
comes in such as a milk carton. Discuss the products with questions like, What
is the farm product? Is it a plant
or an animal product? What plant or
animal does it come from? How do we
use the farm product? A variation
would be to cut out related pictures from a magazine or newspaper. Make a farm products display.
Animal
Talk—Using the Internet and the tape of sounds used earlier in the unit,
invite students to share and identify barnyard sounds, such as a cow’s
“moo”, a sheep’s “baa”, a duck’s “quack”, and a rooster’s
“cock-a-doodle-doo”. Discuss
how stories sometimes have animals talk as if they are human.
Read aloud Hattie and the Fox by Mem Fox and have students chat along
with various farm animals that speak in repetitive phrases throughout the story.
Ask students to say the real animal noise before repeating the storybook
chant. For extra fun, divide the
class in groups and assign the role of a storybook character to each group.
Animal Actions—Record the poem “Through the Barnyard Gate” page 10
in Farm Animals by Creative Teacher Press.
Have the students sing the words as they dramatize the animal actions as
they listen to the recorder.
Mathematics:
Story Problems—Write theme-related word problems on charts or sentence
strips to be used at a learning center, or have pairs of students take turns
thinking of silly farm-animal word problems for their partners to solve.
For example, if two rabbits and three baby chicks were sitting on top of
one cow, how many total animals would you see?
Use plastic or paper animals to help solve the word problems.
Or invite students to draw pictures to match their word problems.
Egg-Carton Math—Label the outside of the cups of an empty egg carton
1-12. Prepare a set of matching
egg-shaped number-word cards for each student.
Have the student put the egg-shaped number card into the corresponding
egg-carton cup. Extend learning by
having students count out from one to twelve small items to place in the
corresponding egg-carton cups. For
extra fun, invite students to place the counted pieces in plastic Easter eggs
before putting them into the cups.
Read
aloud farm-animal books, such as “Farm Counting Book” by Jane Miller or
“Rooster’s Off to See the World by Eric Carle.
Have students contribute drawings and stories to make a class counting
book.
Create
a picture graph showing the students’ favorite farm animals. Invite the class to refer to the chart when singing verses of
“Old MacDonald Had a Farm”.
Science:
Bird or Mammal? —Cut out farm-animal pictures from magazines or from
the Farm Figures on pages 22-23 in “Farm Animals” by Creative Teachers
Press. Tape a magnetic strip to the
back of each picture. Make a Venn
diagram comparing Birds and Mammals. Have
students place each of the farm animal pictures in the correct spot.
Barnyard Babies—Collect pictures of mother-baby pairs.
Have students identify the matching pairs.
Make the pictures into cards to use as a concentration game, flipping
over pairs of cards to find mother-baby matches.
Social
Studies:
Farms Long Ago and Today—Read aloud stories about life on a farm, such as “The Oxcart Man” by Donald Hall and “Farming” by Gail Gibbons. Discuss differences and similarities between farm lives long ago versus today. Guide the discussion so students realize that long ago most families lived on farms and raised their own food (this may have to be explained since colonies still do this). Write the information on a Venn diagram, and invite students to draw corresponding pictures to add to the display. Read aloud “Country Mouse and City Mouse” by Aesop and have the class compare and contrast city life and country life.
Where
Does Milk Come From? —Read aloud the book “Milk:
From Cow to Carton” by Aliki and “Milk” by Donald Carrick.
Read aloud to the class the following:
1.
Cows eat grass and hay.
2.
Machines milk them.
3.
The milk is loaded onto trucks.
4.
The processing plant puts the milk into cartons.
5.
The milk is delivered to stores.
6.
Shoppers buy the milk.
7.
Milk tastes good.
Using
sequencing cards on page 19 of “Farm Animals” from Teacher Creative Press
have the students put the cards in order according to the sentences you read
aloud.
Music
and Drama:
Old MacDonald in Motion—Record the song “Old Macdonald’s Farm”.
First, sing the verses. Second,
Pantomime the animal movements. Third,
Make the corresponding animal sounds. Fourth,
play instruments along with song.
Silly Chicken Stories—Read the story “Chicken Little” by Steven
Kellogg. Using craft supplies
(e.g., construction paper half circles, triangles, and other shaped pieces;
scissors; craft sticks; and glue or tape) make masks of Chicken Little and her
friends. Have students dramatize
the story of “Chicken Little” as you read it aloud.
Five Friendly Farmers by anonymous—Read and act out the poem.
Five
friendly farmers, Wake up with the sun. (Stretch
and yawn)
For it
is early in the morning, And the chores must be done. (Put on a hat and march to
the farmyard)
The
first friendly farmer, Goes to milk the cow. (Milk a cow)
The
second friendly farmer, Thought he’d better plow.
(Work in a garden)
The
third friendly farmer, Feeds the hungry hens.
(Toss grain to chickens)
The
fourth friendly farmer, Puts the piggies in their pens. (Shoo the pigs into
their pens)
The
fifth friendly farmer, Picks the ripe corn. (Pick corn)
And
waves to the neighbor, When he blows his horn.
(Wave)
When
the work is finished, And the evening sky is red.
Five
tired farmers, Tumble into bed! (Yawn and stretch, go to sleep)
(Taken
from “Farm Animals” by Creative Teachers Press)
Physical
Education:
Barnyard Hoedown—Revise “The Farmer in the Dell” to include names
of favorite farm animals. Have the class hold hands and skip in a circle as they sing
the tune. Choose a farmer to stand
in the center of the circle and select the first animal when that part of the
song is sung. Ask students to
continue the selection process as described in the verses.
For extra fun, invite the chosen students to make the corresponding
animal noises and movements as they stand in the circle.
Additional verses may be: The
farmer buys a horse, the horse meets a pig, the pig meets a cow, the cow meets a
chicken, the chicken meets a sheep, the sheep meets a duck, and so on.
Back to the Barn—Take students to a large playfield and have them stand
in a circle. Assign each child one of four animal names and then place an
eraser in the center of the circle. Call
out one of the animal names. Students
assigned that name run around the outside of the circle, back through their own
spots, and into the center of the circle to claim the eraser.
The student who reaches the eraser first gets to call out the animal name
for the next round of the game.
Old Farm Wagon—Use the following revised version of “Old Farm
Wagon” (page 25 in Farm Animals by Creative Teacher Press).
Start the dance by having students form a circle, join hands, and move to
the left as they sing the first verse. Ask
students to perform the additional actions prescribed in parentheses as they
sing the remaining verses.
1.
Circle to the right, Old Farm Wagon (Whole class holds hands in a circle
and moves to the right.)
2.
Promenade around, Old Farm Wagon (Partners hold both hands and move with
the rest of the class, circling to the left.)
3.
Swing your partner, Old Farm Wagon (Partners link elbows and circle in
place.)
4.
Promenade home, Old Farm Wagon (Partners hold hands and move with the
rest of the class to the right.)
Arts
and Crafts:
Barnyard Mobile—Have students color and cut out the barn and animals
(page 13 and pages 22-23 in “Farm Animals” by Creative Teacher Press.)
Use a hole punch and string to help students assemble their barnyard
pictures into a mobile. Have
students write the name of each animal on the back of the corresponding picture. For extra fun, the students can practice drawing their own
barnyard pictures using KIDPIX and the “How to Draw Farm Animals”,
page 27 in “Farm Animals” by Creative Teacher Press.
Hobbyhorse—Use various craft items (tagboard, crayons, scissors,
butcher paper, paint, shredded newspaper, yarn, a dowel or yardstick, and a
stapler), and follow the directions below to make a hobbyhorse for students to
enjoy. Use the following
directions:
1.
Draw a horse’s head pattern on tagboard and cut it out.
2.
Use the cutout to trace two horse-head outlines onto butcher paper.
3.
On both outlines, paint in the horse’s facial features.
Let dry and then cut out the paper heads.
4.
Staple the paper horse heads together, back-to-back, leaving the
“neck” open. Stuff shredded
newspaper inside the opening to make a 3-D horse head.
5.
Glue on yarn for the mane.
6.
Insert a dowel or a yardstick into the horse head (you may have to tape
the stick in place). Invite students to have a time riding the hobbyhorse.
Cooking:
Bread Chicks—Make chicks from frozen bread dough for your class to
enjoy. You will need the following
supplies:
1 loaf frozen bread dough
floured cutting board
greased baking sheet
sharp knife (teacher-use only)
melted butter
baster brush
raisins
Thaw the dough until it
is pliable, and then divide it into 10 pieces.
On a lightly floured cutting board, roll each dough piece into a 9”
rope. Tie each rope to make a center knot to make the chick’s
tail; shape the other end to make the head (pinch the dough to form the beak).
Lightly brush the bread chicks with melted butter.
Let the “chicks” rise in a warm area until they have almost doubled
in size. Poke two holes in each
chick’s head and add raisins to make the eyes.
Bake at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.
(Makes 10 bread chicks)
Fresh Butter—Make butter to go along with your bread chicks. Students will enjoy seeing the cream turn into butter. You will need the following supplies:
baby-food jar
½ cup heavy whipping cream
a pinch of salt
Place the cream and salt
in a baby-food jar and tighten the lid. Have
a group of students take turns shaking the jar vigorously until the cream
curdles (about 20 minutes). Rinse
the butter in cool water. Serve it
with bread chicks. (Makes 3
tablespoons of butter)
Special Events:
Classroom Farm Fun—Borrow an incubator and invite children to watch
fertilized chicken eggs hatch. Invite
parents or local residents to demonstrate farm-related craft or cooking skills,
such as milking cows, making cheese, or sheering sheep.
Set up a farmer’s market, where students bring farm-related treats to
share with others. For extra
learning and fun, invite students to “buy” and “sell” items at the
market.
Farm Field Trip—Arrange a class trip to a farm (I would use the colony). Plan a picnic lunch. Take a lot of pictures (hopefully with a digital camera or regular camera and use a scanner) and record all the fun in a class Big Book titled Fun at the Farm. Make a Power Point about the field trip.