Farms and Farm Animals

Storytime theme: Farms & Farm animals

Books used:

This Little Chick by John Lawrence

This is cute story about a little chick who explores a farm and visits its different residents, while mimicking their different and unique sounds. It is a bit silly to think of a little chick mooing like a cow and oinking like a pig, but this is a great story to include for a farm or farm animal themed storytime to teach children the different sounds that these animals make. At the end of the story the little chick makes his way back home to his mama, where he has fun making all of the sounds of the different animals he encountered- very silly and fun to read aloud!

Rooster Can't Cock-a-Doodle-Doo by Karen Rostoker-Gruber, illustrated by Paul Ratz de Tagyos

This is probably my favorite story that I read during this week's farm storytime. Rooster wakes up feeling under the weather with a sore throat, and he can't cock-a-doodle-doo. Who will wake up Farmer Ted to complete all the chores around the farm that need to get done before the sun goes down? Rooster enlists the help of the other farm animals to try to come up with a way to wake up Farmer Ted. They finally manage to get Farmer Ted up when all of the animals get into a tussle outside of his bedroom window- but they soon come to realize that the only way that the chores can get done in time is if they all pitch in together to help. Personally, I found the first part of the story really great, but I think the book dragged on a little too long at the end. I try to keep all the stories I share with my participants under 5 minutes because they usually can't pay attention for that long. I ended up skipping over some text and summarizing some parts towards the end of the story so that this would but more manageable of a listen for my kids, and I didn't feel that anything was lost from the overall message of the story. The text flows well, and thought is isn't completely written in rhyme, it has a pleasant flowing lyrical tone which made it a true treat to read and listen to.

The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson, illustrated by Marcellus Hall

I'm a big fan of the work of author Karma Wilson when it comes to picture books for storytime. She is most well known for her Bear book series, which is currently up to 8 books about Bear, his friends, and their adventures. Wilson writes with beautiful, poetic language that I feel really captures the audience of anyone listening; these books are truly meant to be read aloud and shared. It also doesn't hurt that Wilson includes a bit of humor and silliness in her stories, which also help in creating interest in the stories. The Cow Loves Cookies contains all of these elements, which makes it perfect to share during a farm themed storytimes. In the story we learn about the different foods that animals around the farm like to eat. We also learn that the cow's favorite food is cookies. At the end of the story we find out that the cow loves cookies so much because the farmer shares them with her at lunchtime, while the cow shares her milk with the farmer to go with the cookies! I highly recommend this book and all of Wilson's other stories if you are in search of a good book to include in your storytime.

Chickens to the Rescue by John Himmelman

Chickens to the Rescue is one of the books in the Barnyard Rescue series of picture books of author and illustrator John Himmelman. Other books in the series include: Pigs to the Rescue, Cows to the Rescue, and Duck to the Rescue. I think that any of the books in the series would be great additions to a farm storytime. The stories revolve around the Greenstalk family, who find themselves in a variety of different pickles that need solving. Luckily, they own a host of clever farm animals who are ready and willing to help the Greenstalk family out. These books are really enjoyable because they are super silly, and they don't overwhelm with too much text. I really like Himmelman's illustrations in this picture book- I feel like I am always discovering something new in them when I read this book.

Activities:

Opening song:

This opening song is from Storytime Katie.

(To the tune of "The Farmer in the Dell")

We clap and sing hello,

With our friends at storytime, we clap and sing hello!

We wave and sing hello,

With our friends at storytime, we wave and sing hello!

We stomp and sing hello,

With our friends at storytime, we stomp and sing hello!

Action song: Two Red Apples

This is a cute and short action song/fingerplay that I learned recently from a bunch of different preschool song websites. I added my own little actions to match the song.

(To the tune of "This Old Man")

Way up high, (stick one fist up above your head)

In a tree, (stick your other fist to join the first above your head)

Two red apples,

Smiled at me. (connect your two pointer fingers together in front of your mouth, then draw them away from each other while curving up to mimic a smile).

So I shook that tree, (mimic wrapping your hands around a tree trunk and shaking hard)

As hard as I could, (keep shaking!)

Down came the apples, (Raise one fist in air, and then drop it down to mimic apple falling, then repeat with other fist)

(mimic bites out of each of your fists to show eating the apples)

Yum, they were good! (rub belly)

Flannelboard: The Little Red Hen

This is one of the first flannelboard stories I've created without any true templates. I just googled, "The Little Red Hen flannelboard", to get inspiration from what others have created and then freehand drew a bunch of the characters on paper and used these to create my pieces. Only after I created this flannelboard story did I realize that my department has a copy of Judy Sierra's The Flannelboard Storytelling Book (2nd Edition), which contains templates for the story- but I still am happy with how my pieces came out.

Cat template/outline is from here. I used the body shape of the cat and altered to it to make a similarly shaped dog.

Inspiration for many of my pieces are from Joyful Mama's Place blog.

Inspiration for the oven and the loose wheat from here.

Inspiration for the goose from this Pinterest pin.

I ended up using the version of the story from Judy Sierra's The Flannelboard Storytelling Book (2nd Edition), with a few tweaks to match the characters I made and to flow in way that I was comfortable recounting.

Song: Old MacDonald

This is obviously a classic song that everyone knows, and the animal sounds worked well with my farm storytime because many of the stories that I used had animal sounds in them, so it was a good chance for everyone to show off what they learned.

I'm not going to bother typing out the lyrics to the song here, but if you somehow don't know this classic you can find a standard version of it here.

What I really like about this song is it is easily customizable to include the different animals you want to sing about. To give this song another layer of pizzazz and to utilize my departments large puppet collection, I used a bunch of different puppets during the song. I placed the puppets in a few tote bags, then pulled them out one-by-one and asked the kids to identify the animal. I know the kids really loved the puppet element because afterwards they asked for more animal puppets!

Here is a shot of our puppets in our department's office:

Flannelboard: Five Clean and Squeaky Pigs

The template and inspiration for this flannelboard is from Storytime Katie. Katie has a downloadable file on her blog that I used to turn the pigs into felt pieces. I couldn't get my brown felt to stretch out the way that Katie did for her pigs, so I just used brown fabric paint to make my pigs muddy. If you don't know this song, I really like this version of the it from the Anaheim Public Library that they posted on YouTube.

(To the tune of Five Green and Speckled Frogs)

Five pigs so squeaky clean,

cleanest pigs you’ve ever seen,

Wanted to go outside and play. (shout: in the mud!)

One jumped into the mud,