Preschool Farm Theme Lesson Plans
Old MacDonald had a farm, ei, ei, o… Do teachers still sing this in preschool?
With the world of education always adding new and exciting resources sometimes the old get moved out. However, while you may not sing Old MacDonald Had a Farm with your preschoolers (or even if you do) – farms are still a great theme for a lesson plan!
You already know this though, since you have found this post. Let’s jump right into our favorite preschool farm themed lesson plans.
Fall Themes for Preschool
Farm theme can be taught any time of the year. They are especially fun to teach during the fall though. Many other fall themes for preschool, like pumpkins, are perfect for pairing with farm theme lessons. The more you can pair lesson themes – the easier it is for you.
In addition to pairing farm lessons with similar themes, they can also be paired together. In fact, we came up with 5 farm themed activities!
- Big Red Barn Preschool Read Aloud Activities
- Circle Time Activities for Preschool
- Farm Exploration Station Activities for Preschool
- Farm STEM Activity for Preschool
- FARMS Math & Literacy Centers for Preschool
Each of these can be taught separately or together. We suggest teaching them alongside one another for a complete farm theme unit.
These five farm activities cover everything you need for a complete farm theme curriculum. Moreover, they provide more than enough learning activities to cover a full month of lessons.
This farm themed preschool bundle is the perfect follow-up to back to school themed activities. We suggest using it in October or November alongside other fall activities. If you already have favorite fall themed lessons though, farms are a year long theme!
Farm Lesson Plans for Preschool
circle time. Moreover, we use a similar format in all of our activities – especially our read alouds.
Beyond teaching about farms, these activities support establishing learning routines and procedures during the first few months of school.
Once you introduce your students to the different learning activities (read alouds, circle time, centers), you can use the same types of activities all year long! This helps make lessons easier to plan and helps students develop their independent learning skills.
Big Red Barn Preschool Read Aloud Activities
These Big Red Barn read aloud activities will teach your preschoolers about farms with week-long interactive lesson plans and story comprehension activities. These interactive activities can be completed digitally using Seesaw or Google Slides. You can also make each one into a farm printable!
Our goal as The Core Coaches is always to provide learning resources that make teaching easier for you. We also are committed to providing resources that support a rigorous curriculum. Our read alouds are a great reflection of these goals.
All of our preschool read alouds are designed to be taught over multiple lessons. This allows students an opportunity to dive deeper into the text and make connections to the characters and events. It also provides you with a full week’s worth of lesson plans!
Each read aloud also follows a similar structure. This helps students know exactly what the activity plan will look like for read aloud time.
- Comprehension questions
- Whole group response to text activities
- Response to text worksheets
- Writing pages
- Vocabulary cards and worksheets
- Quiz
- Retelling puppets
- Craftivity template
The Big Red Barn read aloud covers all of these areas with text specific activities.
Circle Time Activities for Preschool
Circle time is an important part of the preschool classroom. If you are new to teaching preK take a minute to learn How to Start Preschool Circle Time.
Like read aloud time, circle time is great for teaching a variety of skills. Moreover, it is great for establishing routines & procedures in the classroom. Having a set format for circle time also helps you as the teacher plan more easily.
This is the format we follow for all of our circle time activities:
- teacher overview
- detailed circle time lesson plans
- print or projectable text
- 2 reread/review the text activities
- 3 responding to text activities (interactive writing, vocabulary, my connections)
- song lyrics with a familiar tune + 2 corresponding activities
- pocket chart poem + 2 corresponding activities
- 3 game-style whole class activities
- 6 corresponding independent worksheets
Each of these preschool activities during circle time helps develop positive relationships. They also help introduce important academic and social skills. It is also super easy to adapt each circle time activity to match a certain theme.
Just like with our All About Farms Circle Time activities! We turned each circl time activity into its own preschool farm activity!
Farm Exploration Station Activities for Preschool
Preschoolers love their independence! That’s why exploration stations are an important part of the weekly activities. Exploration stations are built for students to manage themselves as they explore the activities.
In our Farm Exploration Station Activities for Preschool, your preschoolers can learn all about farms – independently!
This resource includes everything you need to set up a Farm Exploration Station filled with hands-on, engaging activities designed especially for young learners.
Materials are color coded and have visual icons that match the instruction cards and work board. Your students will love to complete each activity and check their progress on the shared work board or their own personal checklist.
Explore the farm activities that your students will explore at each station:
- Explore: read informational sheets and put items on a farm
- Build: use the cards to build farm animals and objects
- Color: use the code to color farm sheets
- Make: look at the cards to make play dough farm animals
- Sort: place the animals on the correct mat
- Play: spin to move along the game board and collect farm animals to fill the barn
- Create: follow the directions to make a barn craft
- Match: pick a baby animal card and match it to the parent
- Write/Draw: Draw and label a farm animal
Farm STEM Activity for Preschool
STEM isn’t just for older kids! In today’s world, teaching STEM is essential to every classroom! Click here to see how we teach STEM in preschool.
Get your students excited about STEM with this preschool Farm STEM activity. This Farm STEM Build a Barn lesson helps young learners explore, plan, and create using common, everyday materials.
To begin, present your students with a challenge: Build a sturdy barn with a door big enough for the horse to get in and out. Then, provide them with the resources they need to find a solution.
When you purchase this resource we include a list of material recommendations. However, this exploration can be done with any materials you have on hand- such as paper or cardboard, craft sticks, straws, tin foil, etc.
Farms Math & Literacy Centers for Preschool
Our Farm math and literacy centers for PreK provide engaging, educational activities that help students review and build preschool math and literacy skills.
Math is an area that you may not think about for themed lessons. Math is quite easy to adapt to a theme though! Check out the activities below that are part of our farm themed math lessons.
- Cover the Pig: Roll and Count
- Flip and Match: Counting Farm Animals
- Order by Size: Small and Big
- How Tall is the Corn?:
- Clip It: Comparing Numbers
- Farm Puzzles: Patterns
- Sorting: Animal Attributes
- Build a Fence: 2D Shapes
Literacy centers are another area where themes are easy to include. Adding a theme to multiple learning activities helps students make connections across the curriculum.
Check out the farm theme activities you can use for each different literacy center!
- Spin and Cover: Farm Rhymes
- Tractor Match: Beginning Sound Puzzles
- Syllable Smash: Farm Word Syllables
- Spot and Dot: Finding Letters
- Look and Write: Farm Words
- Feed Me!: Upper and Lowercase Letters
- Paper Plate Pig: On my Own Craft
- Eggs in the Nest: Identifying Letters
- Free Write: Farm Writing Center
- Hen Laying Eggs: Name Craft
From traditional songs like Old Macdonald Had a Farm to new farm activities, there are plenty of fun ways to engage kids in learning. Whether you explore farms through our bundle or a single activity, we hope our farm theme preschool activities save you some planning time!
