Hello Friends,
We are in our Farm unit - one of my favorite themes to teach!
Since I am the wife of a farmer, I have
pretty strong opinions about how this unit should be taught! First of
all, most modern day farmers do NOT wear straw hats and wear overalls!
My husband goes to work each morning in jeans and a button shirt and the
only hat he wears is a ball cap when the sun is really strong! He also
is a college graduate so he is a very smart man as well!
Anyway............. I then start to discuss the concept of where our
food comes from. When I asked this question last week "Who knows where
our food comes from?", my kiddos said "The grocery store!" This, of
course, IS true, but then I asked "Where did the grocery store get their
food?" My kiddos really did not know and when I said "the farm", one of
my little guys said "Not all our food, though." I asked him, "Hmmm,
where else do you think it comes from?" He said, "The food in the boxes
doesn't come from the farm." Okay........ we have some work to do here, I
am thinking!! :)
So............
last week we discussed the fact that not all farms have animals that
live on them - some farms just grow crops. Here in central Illinois, we
grow corn and soybeans and a
few farms grow wheat. So we talked about the plants, how they grow, and what products are produced from the plants after they are
processed. We
have been using some big vocabulary words in this unit! We also
discussed the differences between a tractor and a combine and their
uses. This week we are discussing some of the animals that live on a
farm and the products that they produce. I do not, however, discuss the
use of animals for meat. Rather we discuss how we get milk products from
dairy cattle, eggs from chickens, and wool from sheep.
Last year, one of my wonderful co-teachers, Lisa, created a dairy cow
from a saw horse. Here is a picture of it! She covered the legs with
felt and made a felt head. She covered the saw horse with a plastic
table cloth and glued on felt spots. To create the udder, she used latex
gloves and inserted a pin into one of the fingers to make a small hole.
Then she filled the gloves with water and attached to the bottom of the
saw horse. We put a bucket under the
udder and then asked our students to
milk
the cow! This picture shows one of my students milking our cow, Betsy!
:) Fun! We haven't decided if we will be doing this project this year -
it IS rather ambitious and we aren't sure if we are up for it this late
in the school year!
We hatch chicken eggs during our Farm unit.... My kiddos are thrilled when the eggs hatch into little balls of fluff!
If you are interested in my Farm unit, click the photo below to take you to my TPT store.
Until next time!
Blessings,
