Farm Theme Learning Activities and Learning Shelf

We had so much fun learning at home with all the Farm theme learning activities and learning shelf. Here’s a summary post of all the activities we did for this month. To read more about how we do learning at home with our theme based learning shelf, I encourage you to read our How HTS Works page first. To know why we do theme based learning, check out this page.

FARM Theme Learning Shelf

Pinterest Idea Board: [theme] FARM
Unique Hashtag on Instagram: #farmhts
Focus Book: The Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle and Jill McElmurry, How Big is a Pig? by Clare Beaton

This learning shelf and the activities are created for children of ages 1.5 years old to 6 years old. My son is 5 years 1 month old and my daughter is 2 years 9 months when I made this Farm theme learning shelf for them. All the activities have been categorized into the six main learning areas (language, numeracy, motor skills, discovery of the world, arts & creative expression, social & emotional development) that I am focusing on for my children.

FARM THEME LEARNING ACTIVITIES FOR TODDLERS (1.5 TO 3 YEARS OLD)

Dot Letter F: First, I drew circles to make up the letter F. Then I invited my toddler to paint the dots with finger paint. You can also use dot paint markers, poke the circles with push pins (with supervision) or cover the dots with little gems or dot stickers. (language)

Bottle caps Letter F learning toy: My toddler dropped pom poms into the bottle cap letter F and did color matching at the same time. This is a fun toy to play with the corn sensory bin too. (language, numeracy)

Letter F Search Game: I wrote some letter Fs on a piece of paper together with ten more other letters and asked my toddler to find all the Fs. My girl used finger paint here but you can use dot paint markers or dot stickers. (language)

Baby Farm Animals & Parents Matching Game: Cute printable from The Js Arena. I called out the names of the animals as my toddler picked up the card.(language, discovery of the world)

Farm Animals Pictures & Figurines Matching on a Duplo Board: I attached yarn to 2 Duplo blocks and fixed one of those blocks on the left side of the board. Using the same baby and parent farm animals cards from The Js Arena, I asked my toddler to match the pictures to the figurines. This time, I called out the names of the animals in Mandarin. (language, motor skills)

Letters Hunt & Match in a Corn Sensory Bin: I hid letter tiles in a corn sensory bin. My toddler searched for them and matched them to the letter chart. (language, discovery of the world)

DIY Carrot Harvesting & Number Matching: First, I colored some short popsicle sticks green and orange like carrots and wrote numbers on them. Next, I made small slits in egg cartons and poke these popsicle carrots through the slits. My toddler’s task was to pull out a carrot and match it to the number on the number board. My toddler loved poking the carrots back in the egg carton too. (numeracy, motor skills)

Farm Animals Outlines Matching: Trace the outlines of the animals and get your toddler to match the toy to the outlines. (motor skills)

FARM THEME LEARNING ACTIVITIES FOR PRESCHOOLERS (3 TO 6 YEARS OLD)

Word Family DIY Learning Toy: Using this DIY toy, my preschooler learnt about the -IG word family. You can watch the tutorial and learn how to make one here. Keep this DIY toy for learning other word families. (language)

DIY Carrot Harvesting & Sight Word Matching: My preschooler did sight word matching with this same carrot harvesting activity. (language)

Letters Hunt & Match in a Corn Sensory Bin: I increased the difficulty of this activity for my older preschooler by asking him to use a pair of tongs to pick out the letter tiles. You can also ask your child to do upper case letters and lower case letters matching. (language)

Farm Themed CVC Words Printable: My preschooler built 3 letters words using this cute printable from A Dab of Glue Will Do and letter beads. (language)

Farm Animals Chinese Names Search: I wrote Chinese names of the farm animals all over a large piece of paper. Then I tasked my preschooler to find the names of each animal and dot them with the same color. This activity helps in sight word recognition as the child gets a lot repetitive practice as he/she searches for the same word. (language)

Farm Animals Chinese Names Maze: I wrote the Chinese names of 4 farm animals along 4 paths. My preschooler connected word to word until he reached the end of the path. (language)

The Happy Farm Card Game: We played some fun games with this set of cute farm theme cards by Y A LA VUELTA A LA LUNA. There are many ways to play with this set of cards and you can read more over at her blog. (numeracy)

Farm Theme Orientation Game: Another fun game from Y A LA VUELTA A LA LUNA to teach children directions (up, down, left and right). Get this printable here. (language)

Easter Eggs Addition: I wrote basic addition questions on one half of the egg shell and the answers on the other half with permanent marker. I could remove the sharpie easily with rubbing alcohol but please do a test first! My preschooler solved the addition questions and matched the eggs shells. The colors of the eggs don’t match and that’s done on purpose. I didn’t want it to become a color matching activity for my preschooler and distract him from the original intent to learn addition. (numeracy)

Easter Eggs Addition with a Die: In this activity, my preschooler tossed a die twice and picked out the number of eggs as indicated on the die. Then he wrote an addition sentence and solved the question. (numeracy)

Farm Animals Diet Sorting: The is an easy to set up invitation to sort the farm animals according to their diet (herbivore, carnivore and omnivore). I explained what herbivore, carnivore and omnivore mean. Then we looked up the diet of each farm animals and my preschooler sorted them accordingly. (discovery of the world)

FARM THEME ART & CRAFT PROJECTS, EXPERIMENTS & SENSORY PLAY

Farm Animals in Mud Sensory Bin: We made ‘mud’ or brown oobleck by mixing 2 cups of cornstarch, 1 cup of water and brown food coloring. Put in some farm animals and let the kids have some messy muddy farm theme sensory play!

Lastly, visit a farm! It’s Spring and a beautiful time to visit farms again! Do you have a little farm lover at home? I hope he/she will love this learning shelf! Also, check out the rest of our themed learning shelves here!