County Fair

      What feels more like fall than a county fair?  For the past couple of weeks, my students have been learning about farm animals, their importance to NC, and have been busy doing some writing activities as well.  I guess I got all excited thinking about cotton candy and funnel cakes, so my family and I took a little field trip of our own.  

Research, I called it......

Because I hadn't been to a fair in a really, really long time....

 Neither had my girls.  The last picture of them at the fair was, well..maybe when they were still in a stoller.  It was hot. And crowded. But it was a fun day, and there were a LOT of animals.  The pigs were adorable. And there was a whole section called the "mooternity" ward, for pregnant cows. obviously

I have found some free ideas from tpt that I wanted to share with other teachers. (Although, at this moment, the site is having a technical glitch, so I will add the links as soon as I can.) I am reading Charlottes' Web to my class and went in search of some first grade supplemental activities.  I found these Blue Ribbon Vocabulary words that we put on a bulletin board and are listening for in the story.

 

We've also worked on describing words for pigs and made up our own poems with the following framework: 

 

 

 

We even ate "piggy bread" for snack....

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we talked about cows, we read "Click Clack Moo, Cows that Type" and talked about the cows' point of view.  Then we designed our own talking cows and came up with questions that a cow might ask the farmer...

And finally we worked on labeling the parts of a farm, as well as various farm animals...

This week, our "theme within the theme" is "apples".  We are beginning to learn about Johnny Appleseed, uses for apples, apple math, apple writing,  and a few facts about NC apple orchards.

And I really REALLY needed this today.  A mom gave this to me last year, and I LOVE it. I take a deep breath and relax each time I look at it:

Keep calm, everyone:)