12 Farm-Related Activities for Preschoolers
Preschoolers love animals, and the sweet creatures that live on a farm are no exception. If children have never visited a farm, their imaginations have likely been captured by the friendly horses, pigs, ducks, and cows that they’ve heard about in story books, making the animals feel like familiar friends. Introducing children to the animals that live on a farm can be a memorable and joyous week of learning.
There are countless farm-related activities for preschoolers to enjoy, from crafts to creative sound and movement games to themed dramatic play. We’ve gathered 12 ideas for preschoolers to add to your farm-themed lesson plans.
Gross Motor Farm Game
Getting preschoolers moving by letting them move like farm animals is the perfect way to get their wiggles out while learning more about the animals on a farm. You could use this printable to make cards showing an animal and the movements it makes or you could just call out animals and decide as a class what movements best demonstrate that creature’s motion. Galloping horses, waddling ducks, hopping bunnies, and scurrying chickens are all fun choices for preschoolers to imitate. Encourage them to make each animal’s sounds too!
Farm-Theme Dramatic Play
Create a farm-themed dramatic play area where students can pretend to be farmers or animals. Stock the dress-up bin with old flannel shirts, overalls, boots, plastic rakes, shovels, and buckets. Use a cardboard box to create a “barn” and plastic bins to make a watering trough for the horses and a pen for the pigs. Let preschoolers make suggestions for things to add to the farm pretend play area, or even let them help create it by sponge-painting white clouds on blue construction paper to hang along the top half of the wall for the sky. Set out pretend fruits and vegetables that preschoolers can “harvest” and sell at the farm stand. This dramatic play area has potential to enhance math skills, creative play, large motor skills, and more.
Are you looking for a way to bring the magic of farm life to your preschool classroom? This “Farm Footprints” activity from Preschool With a Purpose is the perfect way to teach your preschoolers about the animals that live on farms. Download your free PDF!
Farm Sensory Bin
A farm sensory bin full of corn kernels or large seeds, small farm animal figures, and tiny tractors is a great way to work on fine motor skills, sorting, and sensory exploration. Preschoolers can fill tractors and wagons with kernels, sort the animals by color and type, pretend to harvest the corn, and more. You could also include pieces of fence made out of popsicle sticks and tiny vegetable figures kids can “dig” out of the kernels.
Paper Plate Chicken
This simple paper plate chicken craft is fun for little ones to create while helping them develop fine motor skills by cutting out the chicken’s features from cardstock. All you need is paper plates; brown, red, and yellow cardstock; wiggle eyes; scissors; and glue. Trace the shapes in advance for preschoolers to cut out, but otherwise, they can get creative with gluing on each piece and adding their own artistic flair afterward with crayons. Hang every student’s chicken on a board for a farm-themed week of learning so preschoolers can show off their work.
“Wash the Muddy Farm Animals” Activity
This “wash the muddy farm animals” activity offers sensory stimulation, fine motor skill development, and plain old preschool fun. Make “mud” out of cake mix and water (you could also use chocolate pudding or another “muddy” medium of your preference). Place plastic or rubber animal figurines in the muddy mix. Provide bins of clean, soapy water and toothbrushes to help students clean off the animals. You may need to change out the dirty water once or twice during this activity or ask students to do their washing over a sink instead.
Pig Paper Plate Craft
This pig paper plate craft is simple and has an adorable result. Help preschoolers develop fine motor skills by picking up pieces of pink tissue paper and gluing them to a paper plate to create the pig’s face. Use black construction paper to cut out eyes, a snout, and a mouth for preschoolers to glue on top of the tissue paper pieces. Use another paper plate to cut out ears to be glued to the back of the paper plate.
Farm-Theme Yoga Poses
Farm-theme yoga poses and other animal-like movements are a wonderful way to incorporate gross motor skills, relaxation, and reinforcing concepts about animals. Poses like downward dog, cat and cow, happy baby (pig), and chair pose (hop up and down while holding the pose, pretending to be a rabbit) allows preschoolers to perform yoga poses and learn more about the animals on a farm. Invite students to make the sounds of each animal while holding the poses for some extra fun.
The Farmer in the Dell
The Farmer in the Dell is a classic children’s song about a farmer adding people and animals to their family with each verse until the song reaches its conclusion. Following the third verse, children slowly get selected as each new addition to the farm, with the last child chosen as the cheese. Each preschooler added will join the circle with the farmer. To make this sing-along activity more inclusive and not end on someone being “alone”, let the student who ends up being the “cheese” take over as the new farmer in the next round.
Farm Fence Pattern Activity
This simple farm fence pattern activity helps preschoolers hone their fine motor and pattern recognition skills while “building” a colorful fence. Provide bins of popsicle sticks painted various colors and printouts showing different patterns made of colorful fences. Preschoolers recreate the fence on the printout with their own popsicle sticks, matching the pattern. This activity can be played again and again as the popsicle sticks are never glued together.
Farm Animal Sound Recognition
A farm animal sound recognition game is simple and plenty of silly fun. Play a video or audio of different farm animal sounds and let preschoolers guess which animal is making which sound. Invite students to use movement while making the sounds themselves to get in some gross motor practice. Ask preschoolers to sing an easy song while pretending to be one of the animals. Quacking their way through The Wheels on the Bus is sure to elicit little giggles.
Favorite Farm Animal Graph
A farm animal graph activity for the whole class helps develop simple math skills and works on fine motor development. Have students choose their favorite farm animal and color a picture of it. Then, have preschoolers add their animal picture as a “vote” to a class graph to show which animals are the most popular. Work as a class to interpret the data and give preschoolers printable graph worksheets to color in the numbers of each animal themselves to help them visualize the concept of some animals having more votes than others.
Painting with Tractors Activity
A set of washable tempera paints, bins for the paint, paper, and a few toy tractors are all that is needed to set up a painting with tractors art station. Instruct preschoolers to rinse the paint off the wheels at the sink once they are finished or a bin of water can be set up to give the trucks a dip in between uses. They can then create abstract art out of the different-colored tire tracks. To teach students a lesson in color theory, encourage them to run the painted wheels over tracks in different colors to see what new colors are made.
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About the Author:
Valerie Williams is a seasoned writer and editor who has spent her career creating content in the parenting and women's wellness spaces. Her bylines include Scary Mommy, SheKnows, Forbes Health, and others. When she's not helping women and families live their best and healthiest lives, she's spending time with her husband and teen kids, walking her dogs, reading, cooking, or attending HIIT classes at the gym.