The Big Red Barn

The Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown

Gathering Activity: Barnyard Toys

The kids played with toy barns and animals.  They also read farm themed picture books with their moms.

Circle Time: The Big Red Barn

Sing “Here We Are Together”

We read The Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown.

 

Songs and Finger Plays:

“Old McDonald Had a Farm”- We allowed each child choose an animal to sing about.

“I’m A Little Scarecrow” (sung to the song of "I’m a Little Teapot”)

"I’m a little scarecrow filled with hay.  Here I stand in the fields all day.  When I see a crow I like to shout!  “Hey, you crows, you better get out!”

Art: Big Red Barn Spray Painting

Materials Needed: poster board, washable red paint, water spray bottles like you find at the dollar tree (one per child, outdoor space or  drop cloth for an indoor space (like a kitchen floor) 

BEFORE CLASS
1-Cut out 7 large pieces of poster board into a farm silhouettes.  Make each barn very large.  It isn’t very fun to squirt onto a small piece of paper.  
2-Fill water bottle with water and mix with red paint.

  


DURING MOMMY AND ME
3-Allow the children to spray the barns red. 

This was so much fun...and messy!  It was raining during art time, so we did this activity in the kitchen with tarps.  It stopped raining when it was time to leave. 

Snack: Haystacks
The story includes a haystack on the farm where the children play.  So of course we had to make haystacks for our snack!

Here is the yummy recipe we used. 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Haystacks

Activities: Animal Round-Up and Animal Sound Game

1-) Animal Round-Up:
We decorated a large box to look like a barn.  We hid several stuffed and plastic farm animals.  The children pretended to be farmers and gathered all the animals and placed them safely back into the barn.  

2-) Animal Sound Game: 
We gave each child a set of farm animal Popsicle stick puppets.  We had downloaded a super cute app called I Hear Ewe.  We played a sound and let them hold up the matching animal.   The kids were way more interested in the iPad app than they were with the planned game.  So we let them take turns pushing farm animals and enjoying the noises!  Flexibility is the key to success with two year olds!