Making your farm visit a success

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Curriculum area: Communication and language

Activities:

• Talk session - children give accounts of their day on the farm.
• Recognise pictures of farm animals.
• Naming adult and baby animals from pictures.
• Matching two sets of same animals.
• Game of 'snap'  using animal pictures.
• Play games - teacher starts by saying 'I am pink, have a curly tail and make this sound. Who am I?' When confident children can  take the lead.
• Practise vocabulary - name farm animals using pictures and emphasise words such as
  hooves, fur, tails, horns, fleece.
• Ask open questions - 'tell me about your pictures'.
• Play tapes of animal sounds for listening bingo - identify pictures of animals, children cover up picture of animal when they hear the sound of that animal.
• Children listen to a story about a farm read from a book and then discuss.
• Look at non-fiction books about farms, and at the pictures, and discuss.
• Sings songs - Old MacDonald, Five little ducks went swimming one day.

Resources needed:

• Photocopied sets of farm-animal pictures
• Pictures of animals (you can make your own) and the farm stuck onto card
• Tape of animal sounds
• Story and non-fiction books about farms
• Collection of songs

Curriculum area: Physical development

Activities:

• Outdoor play - pretend wheeled toys are farm vehicles, make a farmyard route for tractors to drive around.
• Use trailers or wheelbarrows for children to move items or pretend animals (other children?) from one part of the farm yard to another.
• Separate a corner of play area into a 'field'. Demonstrate how the farmer would plough or harvest a field, driving up and down. Include a gate in the design.

Resources needed:

• Wheeled outdoor toys
• Cones, boxes and items suitable for partitioning, and marking out 'field'

Curriculum area: Literacy

Activities:

• Match picture to word - 'hen' to picture of hen; extend by matching word to word.
• Practise initial sound collections - 'p' is for pig, pen, pink.
• Free, emergent writing about the farm and what they saw or create a simple story board.
• Each child contributes drawing to a class 'big' book of animals seen on farm visit.
• Structured writing - using word cards with pictures or a sentence maker.
• Draw a picture of farm and write a caption.
• Find words for sentences: 'Here  is a (farm noun)', 'This is a (farm noun)', 'I can see a (farm noun).
• Make a pop-up book and stick in pop-up animals, find the word for the animal in the picture name cards and write it in.
• Make book of animals with names underneath.
• Pictures of animals with speech bubbles - children fill in speech.

Resources needed:

• Letters of the alphabet on individual cards
• Class scrap-book or a few sheets of sugar paper folded in two
• Sentence maker or words on card
• Make folded books with animals cut to pop out or lift up as a flap
• Cards with animal pictures and names
• Folded book
• Pictures of animals with speech bubbles

Curriculum area: Mathematics

Activities:

• Sort: farm animals eg cows/not cows; hens/not hens, limit to two animals to start with and then increase number of animals to sort to three and then four. Develop by sorting animals that have four legs/two legs; animals that go into water/do not go into water; have feathers/do not have feathers/ etc.
• Match: using any sorting apparatus to match like to like. Develop by matching two sorts of animals hens/cows; same number/more or less, etc.
• Order: by height eg 'Here is a cow, can you find an animal which is smaller/one that is taller?'
• Sequence: by twos - hens/sheep/hens/sheep,'Can you copy that line of animals?' By threes - hens/sheep/pigs/hens/sheep/pigs, 'Can you copy this line of animals?' Extend 'Try and make your own line', by colour/number of legs, etc?'
• Counting animals in pictures or on model farm.
• Put toy animals on model farm - count them.
• Put toy animals in fields - ask children to find the field with three sheep or four pigs.
• Put several toy animals into different fields - ask children how many animals in two, three or four fields, and how many animals altogether in all the fields?
• Six egg boxes with different number of eggs (plastic) in each box - ask the children to find the box which has two, four, five eggs in it.
• Can they find one more or less animal from a group?
• Ask children to draw three pigs/one sheep/two cows.
• Use different-shaped fields - ask children to put eg the sheep in the triangle-shaped field.
• Use solid shapes/building blocks - let children investigate building farm buildings with the blocks. Show them pictures of the farm for ideas.
• Use different milk containers in water play and discuss capacity - emphasise comparative vocabulary - biggest, smallest, tallest, shortest etc.; compare different animals for size; put pictures in order of animal size.
• Discuss jobs - what does a farmer do? Sequence the day in order.
• Sequence photos of farm visit. Use vocabulary before and after.
• Class pictogram of favourite animals - children can find a picture of their favourite animal and stick on pictogram. Count out loud the different numbers of animals on the pictogram. Ask which animal do most children like.
• Sort animals into categories ie types of animals, animals and birds, adults and babies, farm animals, zoo animals, pets.

Resources needed:

• Toy animals
• Model farm
• Farm pictures
• Egg boxes, plastic eggs or playdough eggs
• Animal cut-outs/models
• Photographs of the day
• Card for fencing which can be bent into shape or pieces of construction toys laid out in shapes
• Solid shapes, small boxes
• Large graph drawn out, pictures of animals to stick on graph

Curriculum area: Understanding the living world

Plant Activities

• Rubbings of bark, leaves.
• Make plaster casts of bark, leaves, press into plasticine, make card collar for plasticine and pour in plaster of Paris.
• Observing and sorting seeds - stick a few of each sort of seed on cards - have two cards for each type of seed, and label only one card with the name of the seed - children match the pairs.
• Make seed packets out of folded paper envelopes - look at real seed packets, children draw plant/flower on front, write on back, put seeds inside (could just be a few lentils - nothing expensive) and seal up.
• Plant seeds in compost/beans in a jar with blotting paper - then replant into a growing bag - discuss what plants need to grow.
• Place a potato in one end of a shoe box with a lid. Make a hole at the other end from the potatoes and then place some dividers into box so that potato, as it grows and reaches towards the light has to zig-zag around dividers.
• Make observational drawings of plants.

Resources needed:

• Thick paper, wax crayons
• Plaster of Paris, bark, leaves, plasticine, card in strips
• Seeds, card, glue
• Folded paper envelopes, lentils or rice
• Compost, jars, blotting paper, yogurt pots, growing bags, large seeds eg beans
• Shoe box with lid, card for dividers, potato (preferably one that has already sprouted)
• Variety of different plants
• Drawing materials

Curriculum area: Understanding of the World

Animal Activities:

• Look at animal covers - skin, fur, scales, wool, feathers.
• Discuss products from animals ie food, clothing.
• Pictures of animals - encourage talk about body parts - head/body/legs/ tails; legs - number; feet - hooves/paws/ webbed.
• Label big, simple drawing with card words to match part of body.
• Look at similarities and differences between humans and animals.
• Match parent to child using pictures. Human families, animal families, baby/parent.
• Sequence pictures of animals growing up from baby to adult.
• Needs - shelter/food/care.
• Fresh eggs - break open eggs - draw/name different parts. NB - employ all the standard safety
  procedures relating to raw eggs.
• Cook eggs - compare hard boiled with soft boiled with raw. Discuss differences.

Resources needed:

• Pictures of farm animals
• Drawing materials
• Large drawing of animal, names of body parts on card
• Pictures: human - baby; hen - chicken; pig - piglet
• Selection of pictures of different animals from baby to adult
• Eggs and containers

Curriculum area: Understanding of the World

Environmental Activities:

• Make a nature collection in an egg box - put cotton wool in each section and find something from the farm to put into each section e.g. fleece, leaves, stones, grain.
• Farm table - collect and display on table interesting items from farm or rural area. Encourage children to add to the collection from things they might find in their local area.
• Discuss what they liked, disliked about the farm.
• Look at contrasting pictures of old and new farming e.g. milking a cow. What is the same? What is different?
• Feelie box - containing different natural items - fleece, stone, wood.
• Extend children's vocabulary - "Is it hard, soft, squashy, scratchy?"
• Sort items found in different ways - hard, soft, by colour etc.
• Build model farms from natural materials.
• Roll tractors in paint to look at the different tracks they make.
• Build animal;s that can stand, have one moving part, pop up animals etc.
• Make model farm from junk boxes, make fences out of strips of corrugated card.
• Design and make a cosy house for an animal and discuss what it needs - 'What would be good materials to use?'
• Computer programs - sorting/design/pictures/texts.
• Recordings  - stories/poems/songs.
• Make a map of the farm.
• Show picture of farm and ask questions about position - 'What is next to the barn/what is behind the barn/what is in front of the barn?' Extend using farm pictures - 'Where would you expect to find the tractor/cows/chickens, etc.?' Children answer and place pictures in appropriate place.

Resources needed:

• Egg boxes and cotton wool
• Table in classroom put aside. Items to start it off brought baxk from teacher visit to farm
• Finds from the farm
• 'Feelie box'
• Items from farm, rural location or school environment
• Construction kits with wheels
• Assorted junk/masking tape. Junk boxes/corrugated card/large piece of thick paper/card
  as base, paints
• Small medium and large boxes
• Toy animals of assorted sizes
• Different materials - cotton wool, off cuts of different materials, straw, wood shavings
  Some contrasting ie obviously not appropriate materials
• Appropriate softward
• Story tapes, farm-animal sound tapes
• Pictures of past and present farming activities

Curriculum area: Expressive arts and design

Activities:

• Make collages out of natural materials collected on farm visit or rural walk.
• Make prints of animals and farm. Use different objects to create different effects e.g. sponge
  for sheep's wool, corrugated card for fences.
• Make hand-span print of a hen. Use paint prints of hand spans to make feathers.
• Use playdough or plasticine to make own model animals for model farm.
• Provide red and white paints. Can they make a pink pig? Provide red and green. Can they make a brown cow?
• Give a variety of boxes and covers. Let children construct a farm yard.
• Structured play - 'on the farm' using farm outfits and a farm play set.
• When children have had time to practise improvisation in the structured play area have them give a short play using the farm play set.
• Drama - acting-out the journey, interviewing farmers, interviewing each other, asking
  favourite/least favourite/funniest part of the journey to the farm.
• Extend by acting-out familiar storyline.
• Make shakers with different seeds. Record sounds. Can they match the shaker to the sound on
  the recording?

Resources needed:

• Collage materials collected on farm or similar area
• Paint, printing tools such as sponges, card, objects around classroom
• Paint, selection of hands
• Playdough, plasticine
• Paint - powder or mixed
• Boxes, cardboard and wooden covers, tyres
• Wellies, overalls, toy tractor and stuffed toy animals, signs, labels, farm play set, boxes with sides cut out for barns, pens - anything that will help create a farm
• Arrange chairs to resemble coach seating, toy microphone, coat/hat/wellies for farmer
• Dressing-up clothes
• Stiff paper or card, paper fasteners, glue, sticky tape
• Seeds and plastic containers with lids to make shakers