April: Farm Month

After considering many a topic for this month's school time, I have decided on Farm Month.

I wanted our theme to incorporate gardening/planting somehow, since April/spring is the time when things grow. I also loved Nik's idea of incorporating healthy eating habits into this month's theme. Hence... farm month. We can talk about farms and farmers, the animals, the barn, and the fruits and veggies that grow there. And at the end of the month, we plan on taking the kids to Tanaka Farms. They have a u-pick strawberry tour which we did a few years ago (Bennett was too young to remember), and that will be the perfect experience to finish off this month o' agricultural learning.

Some of the items on this month's adgenda are:

• A few crafts from this site. I especially like the paper bag farm animal puppets and the printable farm animal book at the bottom of the page.


• Here's another site that has a lot of free coloring pages. It would be fun to color a page of each animal and then make them into a little book about farms.


• Make a healthy eating chart (great idea, Nik!), where Bennett gets to put a sticker each day when he eats a fruit or veggie!


• I was thinking we could do a "Things That Grow on the Farm" collage, where we rip pages out of old magazines and paste them all month long on the collage. I've noticed that Bennett respionds better to things that are hands-on... and of course, destructive. If it involves trashing one of Mama's magazines, he's all in.


• Of course we will be eating a lot of fresh fruits and veggies this month. I think it would be fun to try to visit a few farmers markets/farm stands in the area. Any good suggestions?


• Love this craft, this craft and this craft too!


• Okay, sorry... two more crafts and I'm done, I promise. This craft and this craft are just so cute.