Farm Investigation

One of my students REALLY wanted to bring in one of her chickens to share. We had just finished space the night before and Easter was around the corner (and this particular chick lays colorful eggs), so it seemed like the perfect time.

I was shocked to hear how many other kids in my class also have chickens!  We followed up by watching a related chicken video.  Due to significant interest in the topic (and an already scheduled trip to Bellair Farm in the upcoming weeks), our farm investigation was born.

In order to get the kids to think beyond chickens, I asked them each to draw and label six additional farm animals. Then we compiled our data into a huge list that could serve as both a thinking and spelling resource for future activities.

Next we filled our room with farm related books.  In order to get the kids to explore and interact with the books (and to continue to build interest in the topic), I challenged them to work with a partner to sketch and label six additional things they might find on a farm.

Up goes reference number 2!

We borrowed toy horses from a neighboring classroom, and they became an instant hit among everyone.  

During snack one day I brought out a large sheet of paper titled farm ideas.  The kids flocked over and could hardly wait to share all of their great ideas for investigating and learning more about farms. I was impressed by how easily this list came to them.  They have clearly learned how to be very thorough investigators!  We discovered this topic was a little different from our previous investigations because we could think of a bunch of experts to bring in to teach us more and help answer our questions.

Once you start seeing kids weave our investigations into their independent choice time activities, you know the meaningful learning has begun! 

I emailed parents to let them know about our topic.  I encouraged "farm experts" to volunteer to come in and teach us, and I asked parents to begin emailing me any farm related photos as well.  As each photo arrived, the children got to share it with classmates. 

We began hanging all our photos on the door under the label Our Farm Experiences.  I had never tried this before, but was I blown away by how much interest and curiosity the photos elicited each time the kids walked into and out of the classroom.  Within a matter of days, our door was filled!

One of the things the kids really wanted to do was turn our classroom into a farm, so we started doing this by creating large scale farm pictures.  Once again we used the farm books so each child could find a picture of a favorite farm animal to observe closely and draw. 

 Check out all those animals and farm machines!

One of the kids really wanted to learn more about pigs, so we started reading all about them.  In order to keep track of our new thinking about pigs, we recorded our knowledge on a bubble map.  Since we couldn't see pigs up close, we also watched some great pig videos to learn even more.  Turns out pigs are more fascinating than we ever imagined.  Each child also had an opportunity to create their own bubble map...a "making thinking visible" format that would be very useful in the upcoming weeks.

Rollo's mom came in to teach us about farm life.  The kids were interested to learn about the ways farm life changes through the months and seasons.

For our Friday project we divided up into smaller animal interest groups.  Each group used resources (books and videos) to learn more about their farm animal.  

They collected their information on a bubble map, 

collaborated (and compromised!) to build a 3-d model representing their learning, 

 

and then took turns presenting/teaching their information to the other groups.

One of the best parts was of course getting to check out each other's 3-d models up close.

I found out one of the preschool teachers had a chicken in her classroom, so we headed off  to visit Ms. Robin.  While we were there, we got to see an incubator full of eggs and learn about the lifecycle process.

Playing farm and learning to draw farm animals continued to be very popular choice time activities.

Many of the pictures parents emailed me to hang on our classroom door were of horses and ponies, so I knew the class had a real interest in learning more about those. Luckily, a student's mother was a horse expert and had graciously volunteered to come in.

We began by wondering about horses....

She taught us so many interesting tidbits about horses and happily answered all of our questions. After her visit we reflected on everything we had learned...

Mr. Brennan even stopped by to tell us about his pregnant horse.

It was time for our big visit to Bel Air Farm.  Each year every grade visits the farm to help prepare the fields or plant some of the fresh produce we enjoy daily in our cafeteria.  Our kindergarten friends weren't afraid to get down and dirty!  While the kids worked I walked around and snapped photos of all the interesting things we could find for later use in the classroom.

After returning to school we looked through all the photos, reminisced about our visit, and wrote on notecards some wonders sparked by our picture walk.  

Despite their varied wonders, the topic that kept coming up over and over again was the chicken who was missing many of his feathers.  We called in a first grade teacher/chicken expert to try to help us make sense of our burning chicken wonder.

Since drawing farm animals continued to be such a popular thing to do, we learned about a farm animal artist and got to work imitating her art style.

As grandparents day approached several kids even decided to create a puppet show for their grandparents and special friends set on a farm.  

The were still SO many possibilities for our farm exploration - a number of kids were fascinated by farm vehicles and tools, puppet shows were popular during choice time so we could have done whole class or small group performances of some of the fiction farm stories we had been reading (such as Ms. Wishy Washy on the Farm), their map interest could have led us down the path of creating 3-d maps of farms that specialize in different things, etc. However, there was an excitement in our classroom about spies and spy gear that was spreading like wildfire.  With the start of my maternity leave just weeks away, I knew we would need to begin our spy investigation now or it would never happen.  Despite how odd it felt to drop a topic mid investigation, I could tell it was the right move for my students. So, off we headed into the world of secret agents and spies...