Tot School- Farms Week 1

This week for Tot School we began learning about farms.  I thought this would be a fun tine to do this, as we will be going to a farm to get our pumpkins.

We read many books during the week.  I had collected books from the library the previous week, so we were all set.  Some of the books we read included:

• Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown
• Little Scholastic Petting Farm
• Biscuit's Day at the Farm by Alyssa Satin Capucilli
• Tractors by Connor Dayton
• Peek-a-Moo! by Marie Torres Cimarusti (This is Little Guy's favorite!)
• A Visit to the Farm by B.A. Hoena
• My Farm Friends by Wendell Minor

We started a new sensory bin this week.  Little Guy helped me get the materials from the grocery store, then I set it up during nap time.  The bin had dried split peas, dried split yellow peas, and dried black beans.  I added some Habba wooden farm animals, and our farm sensory bin was all set.  I also added the letters to spell farm to two sides of the bin to start practicing those letters (I added them later in the week).

Our farm sensory bin.

Woah, checking it out.

As great as I thought the sensory bin with the wooden figures was, Little Guy enjoyed it more with some measuring cups to scoop and pour.

I like the measuring cups!

 It got even better when he mixed all the materials up!

Mix, mix, mix!

Little Guy also had some practice with a life skill.  We have been working on sweeping up the materials that spill.  He is getting better each time.

Sweeping them into a little pile.

Pushing them into the dustpan.

This week I printed out some materials that I have found through Pinterest. (Visit my farm themed Pinterest board here.)  One thing we used is from the Tot Book pack from the blog 1+1+1=1.  I used the activities that I thought were best suited to Little Guy.

Little Guy's farm Tot Pack.

The tractor sequencing was a great skill.  We have been talking about big and little lately, so this was a great extension.  I started with three tractors, then after he seemed to know what to do, we added in the last two, for a total of five tractors.

Carefully considering which is the smallest tractor.

Putting them in order.

Matching heads and tails was another great activity.  This proved to be challenging for Little Guy, but he was able to do it with support.

Putting the cow together.

We have not  used the animal matching yet.  He has colored one page in the little coloring book.  This will be a great color review, and we will continue to use these activities next week.

An activity that I thought would be great fun was Sticky Sheep from Two-Daloo.  I traced a sheep outline onto clear contact paper, added an S, and set out a box of white pom-poms.  I thought that Little Guy would enjoy adding the pom-poms to the contact paper.  Not so much.  He enjoyed sticking his hand to the paper, and after being up for 4 days, we now have 3 cotton balls stuck on the sheep (we found the cotton balls stuck better than the pop-poms).

The best use of this project was when Little Guy spilled his pom-poms and got more practice sweeping.

Making a little pile.

One last activity we did this week was a discovery bottle.  I used some of the materials from our sensory bin and put them in a water bottle along with the foam letters F, A, R, and M.  Little Guy seemed to enjoy shaking the bottle!

Using his big muscles to shake!

I see the letters!

This was a fun first week of learning about farms.  We will continue this theme next week.

What farm activities have you done?

We linked up to No Time for Flash Cards Kids Activities Linky Party!

We linked up to the Tot School Gathering Place at 1+1+1=1 (I was featured from last week!).