Farms

Last week, we wrapped up our farm animals unit.  We had been studying the animals that live on a farm for 2 weeks.   I always begin with a group research project.  To start, I let the students choose which animal they'd like to learn more about.  I type up the groups and the kids begin by coloring their covers and browsing library books about their animals.  We also begin our large anchor chart. We focus on one animal a day and read a book together.  We complete that portion of the anchor chart.  The headers for the chart came from Reagan and I made the pictures with clip art.  The chart will come in handy when the kids get to their "facts" pages for their farm animal books.

On the 2nd day, we begin the K and W of the K-W-L chart in groups.  The kids are allowed to work together because this is a group project.  Day 3 is the diagram.  Day 4 is facts.  I encourage the kids to use the anchor chart and work together.  We finish up by adding future questions to our booklets and making a farm animal craft {farm animal crafts by Laura Bensley}.  We also took a field trip to the farm!

This unit is so simple, engaging, and FUN!  Perfect for those last few weeks of school.  Check it out by clicking the cover below.

xo
Megan

Farm Lovin'

We just wrapped up our Writing unit on farm animals and boy, did we have a great time!  You may have read my post last week about our writing, but if you missed it, click here to see it!  Each day we worked through a page in our books.  We ended our unit by making some fun farm animal crafts and taking a field trip to a dairy farm!

We had fun with these free farm speech bubbles from Whimsy Workshop Teaching!  The kids were cracking me up with these!

"Hey, what's shakin', bacon?" 

Finally, we worked on and completed our farm animal crafts!! I had my examples all ready and the materials for each animal laid out.

The kids were so excited to see it all laid out for them when they arrived!  All but the chicken were paper plate crafts.  We didn't really use patterns, except for the big pieces, and I got them at DLTK's website.

On Friday we visited a local dairy farm.  It's always my favorite field trip of the year.  This year it was our only field trip, so naturally, the kids were loving it!  We had a great time.  It was hot but there was a breeze. I can never go to this dairy farm without getting a chocolate malt!  When we returned, the kids worked on their field trip books from What the Teacher Wants. 

If you like the farm animal writing unit that you saw at the top of this post, click below to check it out.  I also have ocean animals, zoo animals, and arctic animals.

xo
Megan 

Farm Animal Research

After wrapping up our "All About" animal research projects, we moved on to farm animals!  We are taking a field trip to the farm next week and I wanted my students to have a good background about farm animals, as many of them have never had the opportunity to visit a farm.

We began with a K-W-L about farms in general.   The kids came up with some great questions for this! Next, we chose our groups for our research project!  I had pre-selected 5 animals and pulled sticks to allow kids to choose their animals.  They browsed the books and colored their covers on the first day.  They were pumped to find lots of elements of non-fiction!  You'd think they had hit the lottery when they found a TABLE OF CONTENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

We'll be working through each over the course of the week.  Stay tuned for some SUPER AWESOME art projects to go with our research writing!

I also integrated the farm into our Reading block.  We've been reading lots of good, non-fiction farm books! We did a fun inference activity with a farm theme from One Extra Degree!  I'm not sure what grade level her pack was intended for, but my first graders rocked it!   I introduced inference and we did several examples from Amanda's pack together first.  Then, I put kids in groups, with one person {a strong reader} to be the "reader."  That person read the passages and then the kids discussed what their inferences were.  I was blown away by their work!  Almost every group inferred correctly/logically for each little story prompt!

This recording sheet is not included--I created it for my first graders.

Our word chunks that we learned this week just so happened to be the diphthongs oi/oy...they went nicely with pigs and "oink!"  We did a Scoot game from my "Chunking Words" pack.  We also did a Feed the Pig game from The First Grade Parade.  We've used this little activity for 3 years now!

 
We're so excited about our trip to the farm!  What fun field trips do you take?

xo
Megan