The Farm

The Farm is generally a topic I cover in June each year and I always link it to our school tour, to the farm of course!

June is always such a busy month – with sports days and school tours etc. it can be tricky to fit everything in!

Our roleplay for the farm merges with our SESE display to make a farmyard. It becomes very noisy during Aistear time as we have all sorts of farm animals making a right hullabaloo in the farmyard!

We have also had a farmers market roleplay area. This roleplay works really well if you have covered money as the children get so much fun out of playing shop while also learning to categorise farm produce.

Other activities that we do include lots of gardening in the school garden. We plant some fruits and vegetables throughout the year so this is the ideal time (and topic) to be outside giving them some TLC.

You’re never short of a good picture book for this topic and here are some of my favourites to get inspiration from

I find this topic particularly good for doing some sequencing activities. My favourite story to sequence during the topic is the story of ‘The little Red Hen’. Pie Corbett does a great Talk for Writing session on this story – check it out here! Some other activities I do with this story are story mapping, retelling the story with actions, role playing and creating alternative characters/settings/endings. All of the activities combined makes it much easier for the children to get creative with their writing and oral language.

We link in our SESE by learning all about and sequencing the story of milk and the story of bread. We even make some fresh bread for the parents to try, although when it comes out of the oven and smells so good not very much of it ends up leaving the classroom!