Farm and Little Red Hen

In the beginning of September, I like to do a 2 week unit on farm, including the Little Red Hen.

I always start with reading Click, Clack, Moo on Bookflix (I LOVE that our district  has a subscription to it). We listen to it once, to enjoy it, and then again so they can put the events of the story in order.

They do this as a group, so each person gets 1 or 2 cards to illustrate.

Then we watch the nonfiction paired text on Bookflix for farms. That's why I LOVE Bookflix, there's a fiction and nonfiction pair for ALL the books they have on there!  So we did a circle map about what a farmer might do during the day. I also did a directed drawing and had the kids label the different parts of the cow.

Then they drew theirs in their Learner's Journal.

We did a planning page for our writing and then they wrote their FIRST ever paragraph. Or rather...sentences that weren't really a paragraph, but we're still working on the fact that sentences can start on the same line if there's still room to write. 

Because we talked about cows, I wanted to include Deanna's book that is in her Farm Unit. I projected it on the screen. After every "section" we stopped and did a quick group chat about what they learned during that section.

 I wrote what they said they learned on post-it notes and then put it on our Schema board. This is part of Deanna's Farm Unit too. 

We needed a craft to go with our writing we did, so we did the Glyph that comes with Deanna's Farm unit too!  They all came out different, and so cute!

AND I just had to do Mrs. Wishy Washy's Farm

Deanna has some stuff in her Farm Pack to go with this too. We talked about character traits using actions of the characters. And of course a cute little directed drawing craft. They turned out so cute!

In our math centers, I actually came across some fun math mats from Reagan. They are in her Math Mat pack. Perfect for our farm weeks!

Deanna also had some pig stuff in the Guiding Fristies Math pack I was using that week.

We ended our farm week with some fun with Little Red Hen.  I use the activities in my Little Red Hen pack during the week for centers. One of my favorite thins to do is the comparison chart. There are TONS of versions of LRH, most of them pretty similar to each other. But I always end the unit with one that is SO different. They always love it!

Here are some of my favorite versions:

Then the students write about the central message, or what the author wanted them to learn... and we revisit this lesson a lot throughout the year "You have to work for what you want!"

You can check some of these activities out by click on the pictures below: