After a two week absence from Barnyard Tales I returned to
find a whole new audience. I'm guessing our regulars, mostly 3 and 4 year olds,
are off to preschool this fall. The new catalog listing dropped the age range
from 3-8 to 1-6, which has brought in a whole new and much younger crowd. The
oldest of the ten children in attendance were two three-years-olds. The rest,
younger--three 2's, four 1's, and a 10 month old whose mother said they just
needed a place to go to get out of the house and meet other moms. I quickly
adjusted the day's plan. Thank goodness I come loaded with a whole basket full
of books, my autoharp, and Henrietta!
After the welcome song, Henrietta greeted the children and
told them about her friend Hilda and begged me to read her story: Hilda
Hen's Happy Birthday by Mary Wormell. Seems Henrietta's friend was
delighted when she found lots of lovely gifts on her birthday--oats, apples,
even a dust bath! But were those "gifts" really meant for Hilda?
Hmmm, it seems not. In the end, however, her friends do surprise her with a
lovely party on her special day and the rooster crows. His version of the
"Happy Birthday" song, perhaps? We sang her our version--twice
through. Even one-year-olds know and love that song.
With a tractor scheduled to be available for children to
explore at the upcoming open house and festivities at Luscher Farms this
weekend, it seemed like the perfect day for the tractor books. At least one
toddler agreed! There was a squeal of delight when I pulled out Tractors
by Hal Rogers and he saw the photo of a big John Deere on it. We mostly just
looked at the pictures. But the crowd was getting restless. Time for a song;
"If You're Happy and You Know It." Guess they were; there was much
happy clapping and stomping and shouting "Hurray!!"
That got some wiggles out so we were ready for Driving My
Tractor by Jan Dobbins & David Sim. A rhyming text and colorful
illustrations tell the story of a farmer's "very busy day" as he
loads an increasing numbers of animals into the trailer hitched to his tractor
and drives them down a bumpy country road. We got really good at the tractor
noise, "Chug, chug, Clink, clank, toot!" I love how participatory
these moms of toddlers are!! The increasingly heavy load and a bumpy road
eventually sends those animals flying. What to do? Luckily they were waiting
for the farmer in the barnyard when he arrived home. Whew!!
It was time for another song and movement. Music is a
lifesaver with this age group. Sitting still is not in a toddler's job
description and it often felt like I was speaking to a colony of ants. Still, I
wanted to share Dandelions, Stars in the Grass by Mia Posada 'cause I'd
gone out and picked all those dandelions and fuzz balls for them. And, after
all, aren't dandelions every small child's favorite flower? Had about half the
crowd with me. They loved blowing on the fuzz ball. Now we could see all the
little seeds--and the teeny, tiny bugs that were on it, the ones now running
all over the paper plate. Nature is full of surprises! So we decided to move
outside and discover more.
No one had beat us to the chicken pen this morning so the
hens weren't even out and about until they heard our voices. They gingerly
stepped out of the hen house and then eagerly rushed to the fence for our
treats of Swiss Chard and dandelions. The rooster just couldn't stop crowing.
Saying, "Thank you," for taking such good care of his ladies,
perhaps? Then it was off to the Children's Garden where we were crowing
"thank you" for the new pile of soil, a gift from Luscher Farm Coordinator Karen Davis, in the digging corner. Oh, the treasures we found!!
And, oh, how we love digging in the dirt. A handful of the older children went
into the green house to see the large praying mantis who has taken up
residence. Wow! What a handsome guy. We'd been told he was eating a spider
earlier in the morning, but he was finished with "breakfast" by the
time we arrived.
One of the children commented on how windy it was yesterday.
I've been waiting for a windy day to read some stories and poems about the
wind, but, of course, hadn't brought them. Hopefully we'll have another windy
fall day before Barnyard Tales is over for this season. Besides the wind, we'll
check out pumpkins and sunflowers in our last two sessions as fall approaches
and we put the garden to bed.
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