I love our farm unit in 1st grade! Each and every year I do it a little different. Teaching the same ol’ same ol’ just isn’t me and learning about the farm allows so much variety.
Plants, farm to table, animals and their life cycles- the field trips, the songs- there’s so much out there and each year I add just a little something extra.
By far the best part has to be the babies! The babies, you guys, the wee little babies! We incubate baby chicks and the kids go wild for this. It brings the oviparous life cycle off of the paper and into their hands.
Not to mention after school each day I spend a good amount of time snuggling these sweet little guys. #fluffychickteachertherapy
Along the way and as we learn about all the ins and outs of the farm we create a lapbook to document our learning.
To finalize our unit and share our learning we each complete an animal report. It is so dang hard to find research information for first graders. I want to support them through one of their first research processes, but I also want them to have a sense of independence.
I created books for each farm animal that include all of the information AT THEIR LEVEL! The books each follow a similar pattern so they aren’t having to seek out additional sources to get the information they need.
I pick up a class set of the target blank books from the “dollar” spot each year. We use these templates to create our own information reports. You can grab the template as a freebie by clicking any of the images. You can also get the lapbook or research books in my TpT shop.
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