Farm Field Trip

Field trips to visit a farm are always a hit with my kids.  When we lived in Georgia, we visited a peacock farm and a regular farm with a feed store within months of each other.  Today, we visited a produce farm with our play group.

Our field trip was awesome!  As an added feature, you can have birthday parties at this farm.  Although this was not a birthday party, they were set up to show our kiddos a wonderful time.

First, the kids took a "tractor train" ride (as Arin called it).

 Next, they had free time to play on the playground and swing on the tire swings ~ always a big hit!

Then, back to the tractor train which led them out to the field where the kids were allowed to pick strawberries.  Ella said this was her favorite part of the day.

My girls also picked onions.  This was a great experience for my kids.  They have picked strawberries, blueberries, and citrus, all which are very simple to pick, but they really had to work to get the onions out of the ground, which made it even more rewarding.

Then, back to the tractor train.

And over to the playground where the kids were given ice cream. Yum!

After their sweet treat, it was time to get back in the tractor train again. By the way, all the kids loved, loved, loved this, which is why they rode it so often.  It was a bit bumpy, so Ella told me it was like being on a roller coaster.

This time, they stopped at the petting farm to feed the animals.

Then, back to the tractor train one last time and the field trip was over.  All the kids enjoyed it.  My girls have already asked if they can go back again tomorrow!

Snip Snap! What's That?

We found this book when we lived in Georgia and it quickly became a favorite.  However, we don't own the book and we hadn't read it since we moved back to Florida.  I knew the girls would be thrilled to check it out from the library again last week.  Each day, we read the story and did a quick activity to go along with it.

Summary of the story (copied from front of book)

Three siblings are frightened by the wide mouth, long teeth, and strong jaws of the alligator who has crept up the stairs - until they decide they have had enough.

Day One

A week or so ago, the girls painted pottery.  It was such a hit that I knew they would like to do something similiar again.  This time, I found wooden alligators ($1 at Michael's) that they were able to paint (paint and paintbrush included). 

Day Two

Arin reviewed some of the three letter words ending in "-ip" or "-ap". 

I cut out two alligators.  On the first I wrote -ip and on the second, I wrote -ap.  The story stars three children (two girls and a boy).  For each word, I cut out two girls and one boy.  I wrote the word's consonants on the girls and the vowel on the boy.  Then, I orally gave Arin a word, she found the correct letters, spelled the word and put it under the correct heading (-ip or -ap).  This quickly became too tedious, which did not surprsie me.  It's been so long since we've worked on structured reading activities that I was mainly trying to see what she remembered.  I ended up finishing the spelling of each word and then we read them together.  She liked that much better.

Day Three

Ella has been begging to do school.  I didn't plan as many activities for her to go along with this book, but I did find these counting cards.  She loves to count and she wanted to do this activity over and over and over!

Day Four

Arin worked on a math project using the alligator theme.  I printed out five alligators and  20 eggs.  On the alligators, I wrote the numbers 1 through 5.  I cut the eggs in half.  On each half of the egg, I wrote part of an addition problem.  Arin was to find all of the math facts that equalled each answer and put it under the correct alligator.  So under the "1" alligator, there would be an egg that had the number 0 on one half and 1 on the other half.  The second egg under the "1" alligator would have a 1 on one half and a 0 on the other half.  She continued this for each egg.  This actvity seemed to be very enjoyable to her.  She enjoys math and she liked finding the pattern under each alligator.

Day Five

We took a field trip to Gatorland.  It was the first time that we've been there and we enjoyed it.  We saw alligators of all sizes (baby up to 13').  Ella got to pet an alligator (Arin was too scared to, even though its mouth was taped shut).  We saw several shows, fed alligators, walked around the swamp, saw all types of birds, fed animals in the petting zoo, and the kids played in the water area.  Their favorite activity was feeding the birds. 

This is the snake Andrew caught on our swamp walk.

Arin's Summary of the Story

The alligator was creeping up the stairs because it wanted to eat the three children.  It bit open the door and walked close to the children.  The children were scared and ran away.  At the end of the story, they said "Alligator, You Get Out!"  Then, the story asked if the alligator was scared.  And it was!  It left and went all the way back home.  The children were happy when the alligator left!