What's On the Shelf - November - Farm

We had a break from themes during October and enjoyed the school holidays and a slow start back into some more structured learning.  We are all ready for a new theme for November though - Farms.

I am really excited about this theme as we have lots planned.  We kicked it off last week with a trip to Kelmscott High Farm.  It is quite an amazing school.  We got to hold and interact with chickens, rabbits, and sheep in the animal nursery.  Then we were taken to see a cow being milked and where they shear the sheep.  Outside we were able to feed the horses, goats and alpacas and then toured the veggie garden where we got to pick some oranges and lemons to bring home.  As we were leaving we were lucky enough to see them bring out a new calf and try and get it to feed off a surrogate cow!   Here a few photos from our day out.

This month, as well as our inside "school" we have new veggie gardens to plant and we are going to make a scarecrow to try and keep those pesky crows away.  Maybe we should put one in our chook pen so they will stop stealing all of our eggs!

Here is a sneak peek of what is on our shelves for out theme this month:

Firstly, our small world farm sensory table, complete with grain silo to practice scooping and pouring, pigs in mud, ducks in a pond and lots of animals to feed.

We also have a few different farms sets to play with including an Ikea farm, a Little People farm and  Mega Blocks Farm.

On our shelves we have:

Sunflower seeds to scoop and pour.

Animal magnets on a cookie sheet to sort as farm animals or not farm animals.

Our Leap Frog farm animal matching set.

Cotton reels to practice lacing

Our UNO moo game

Farm pictures of either 1 or 2 syllables and pegs to select the correct amount

Colour fun puzzles

Fruit and vegetables to sort into a three part tray with our kiddy tongs

Farm strips for cutting practice

What's in the Web?  Beginning sounds practice.

Pig Number Game.  Roll the dice, count the dots and find the matching number to cover with a magnet.

Some laminated farm tracing pages and whiteboard markers.

Another beginning sounds game.

Washing farm animals.  A spray bottle to wet them, toothbrush for scrubbing and cloth to dry.

Matching farm animal mothers and babies.  WE also have some plastic farm animals to match to the cards.

Matching the correct colour pegs to the horses.  Good for strengthening those little fingers!

And finally, some farm animal do-a-dot pictures and dot paints.

We are ready for a busy, busy month!!

Linking up to Tot School at 1+1+1=1

Weekly Wrap-Up - Finishing our Space Unit

We finished up our month long unit of Space for the two littlies.  The older two will continue to do a more in depth study of the Solar system for the remainder of the year.  We continued with our shelf activities for the month but also saved some of our best and most fun activities for this week.  Here is a look at what we did.

Nathanael and Samuel dot painted all the planets to display on our wall.

Then we did some more paper mache planets.  These are taking a loooong time.  Hopefully we will get to paint them next week!

Liana and Liam made pin hole boxes to view the sun,

and Samuel painted and glued a wooden rocket ship.

We experimented with some fizzy, exploding colourful stars.  We made them by mixing bi-carb soda, a bit of water and food colouring to make a thick paste and then filled some ice cube moulds and froze them over night.  The next day we popped them in a tray of vinegar and watched the reaction!

Once they finished fizzing and exploding we added more bi-carb soda and made mountains and volcanoes complete with erupting red lava!!

For the final night of our space unit, I bought a packet of sparklers and we went outside and had a great time sparkling all over the front yard!!