April 20-23; 27-30

The Farm

With the growing interest in playing with the animals in our classroom, the children pretending to be animals in their play and our upcoming trip to a farm, we decided to take a deep exploration into Farms and all that lives and happens there. We will follow a Project Approach path for these explorations, and are excited to see what we can learn!

Our first step in our exploration of Farms was to tap into the children's prior knowledge and experience. We started with a simple "Have you been on a farm?" chart to see what experiences the children have had, and this naturally led into a discussion about what is on a farm and what they have seen and done on a farm. 

Extending the conversation from the chart, we began a discussion to find out what the children know about the topic and then what they want to know. "What do you know" and "What you want to know" can be a little abstract for preschoolers, so we use phrases like "Tell me something about X" or "Tell me about a time when you..." for the first part and then "What are you wondering about X" or "What question would you ask X" for the second part. Framing these questions in this way allows the children to recall an experience they have had (working memory) and then tell us about it. And then tell us what else they want to know about it. 

The key to these documentations is that we write what the children say so they see that what they say can be written down and read back and that their actual ideas are important. The "want to know" is always in the form of a question so that we have something specific to find out and answer. If their idea isn't in question form we help them form it into a question to emphasize what they are "wondering about." They then repeat the question and we write it down. This interactive experience allows the children to use their memory and life experience to verbally describe a topic, their ideas about it and their wonderings about it. They practice their oral and expressive language as they share and their receptive language as they listen to their peers' ideas and wonderings. 

After we documented what we know and wonder about Farms, we found photos to match and created a matching game. We also printed their questions our to refer to after our trip and after our explorations conclude. 

Matching games allow us to naturally review our knowledge and documentation. These types of experiences also allow the children to connect pictures to words while using the receptive language (listening) to hear a description and then connect it to a picture. 

Each child had pictures in front of them on the carpet. A word was held up and described - the description incorporated the picture as well as what we discussed about each one. As connections were made, the word was read and then placed under the corresponding picture. This process reinforces the connection between the oral and written word, and that every visual has a label. 

Tamworth Farm

We had a fantastic trip to Tamworth Farm! The childen interacted with animals, climbed a tractor, participated in an obstacle course and overall spent a great morning outside on the farm. Many pictures were taken, and we chose a collection of them to explore back at school that encompassed each farm experience.

Once we returned from our field trip we changed our chart to indicate that all of the children have now been to a farm. Then we dove deeper into what we saw on our trip and how it compared to what we knew about farms and what we thought we would see there...

The children explored the photos of our trip together and began to point out what they saw and what they remembered. After a few minutes of this discussion we began to label the pictures. The children verbally identified what they saw in the picture and we made a highlighted label for them to trace. Each child traced a few labels and then "read" it back to their friends. We then brought our photos and labels to the carpet and compared and contrasted the pictures and photos.

As we discussed the photos and pictures, the children began to sort and match them on their own. This process continued until each picture had a category. Each category was reviewed and we made a plan to match the words the next day.

To finish out our first two weeks of Farm exporations, we organized and sorted our classroom animals. The goal was to differentiate between animals that live on a farm and those that do not. The farm animals will be incorporated in our explorations next week!

As the animals were identified as "farm" and "not farm" animals, the children began to naturally sort and line up each type of farm animal. They identified the type of animal and would point out a characteristic that would add it to the group. Sorting along with lining up the animals shows beginning math skills as well as a clear plan for organizing the materials to understand their relationship.