The children have been very interested in animals, specifically the farm animals. These seem to be the animals the children recognize the most. To build on this interest we have been introducing different materials and provocations to help the children learn about life on the farm. We started first with pictures of farms and eventually moved on to videos. We brought out fake grass to use for the fields, as well as barns, tractors, farm animals, and hay. The children like to imitate the sounds the animals make, and seem to be very drawn to the way the animals move. The two animals which stood out the most were the cows and the horses.
Building on this interest of horses, we brought in a pretend horse stable for the children to explore. We have been looking at pictures of the insides of barns, to see what the animals need to live comfortably. Our ultimate goal is to begin building a barn of our own, so the children can use this prop during their play. We have been introducing different vocabulary words which can help the children describe the barn. We are also investigating with different materials to use to build the barn. The children have just started exploring with the horses this week. They were surprised by all of the different colored horses, and were really focused when examining the new animals. The children began identifying the horses by color, and are able to identify their favorite ones to play with. We will continue our exploration with horses, and work on different ways to represent them (we'll start first with drawing, and then move on to our favorite paint). We are eager to see where these explorations take us, and hopefully in the spring we can plan a trip to an actual farm!
