Petting farms typically engage children in organized activities.
Farm animal projects introduce children to a variety of animals, including cows, pigs, chickens and horses. Children can explore the ways in which farm animals provide food, such as a cow's milk and a hen's eggs, or help farmers to accomplish tasks, such as tilling soil. Projects can range from expeditions to petting farms, which allow children to interact with the animals, to arts and crafts activities that enable children to practice math and language arts skills.
Virtual Farm Tours
Engage the children in a virtual tour of a farm. For example, 4-H Virtual Farm (sites.ext.vt.edu) introduces children to different types of farming, such as horse, beef, cow, chickens and aquaculture. Have children explore photos of farm animals with voiceovers by farmers. They can learn new vocabulary words, such as "colostrum." or the milk produced during the first few days after calving, and play a dairy matching game, quiz and word jumble. Developed by a British farming charity, the Virtual Farm Walk (hgca.com) combines photos, video clips and audio narratives on different farm animals, including cows and pigs. Download activity sheets on what cows and pigs need, the machines on a farm and farming and wildlife.
Arts and Crafts
Gather egg cartons, cotton balls, orange and white construction paper, yellow food coloring, glue, markers and plastic bags, so children can create craft chickens. Squeeze a few drops of food coloring into a plastic bag. Add cotton balls so they soak up the food coloring. Remove the cotton balls and place them on wax paper to dry overnight. Have the children cut the cups out of the egg cartons. Direct them to glue a cotton ball to the bottom of a cup and then glue a second cotton ball on top of the first. Have them fold the orange construction paper in half and cut a triangle along the fold so they have an orange, diamond-shaped beak. Ask them to glue the beak to the top cotton ball, which is the chick's head. Have them draw and cut out a pair of wiggly eyes from the white construction paper. Instruct the children to glue the eyes above the beak.
Language Arts
Instruct children to visit websites that feature farm animals, such as ducks, sheep, turkeys, chickens and cows. Ask them to create a fact sheet on their favorite animal. For example, Kiddy House's "All About Farm Animals" (kiddyhouse.com) provides information on a farm animal's origins, physical features, behavior, diet and life cycle. Have the children print out photographs of their chosen animal to add to their fact sheets.
Mathematics
Use plastic farm animals to engage children in math projects. Set up four stations in the classroom. Place 10 identical animals in station one, five pairs of animals in station two, two sets of five identical animals in station three, and 10 different animals in the last station. Discuss the meaning of classification and ask the children what they see in each station. Hand each child a bag of jumbled toy farm animals. Have them go to each station and create the different types of sets with their own bag of animals, such as placing five toy cows and five toy pigs in station three.
Tags: farm animals, animals station, construction paper, cotton ball, cotton balls