Over the last week, our house has been filled with the sounds of farm animals! The girls enjoy reading, playing and learning interesting facts about animals on the farm.

One of the simple journal activities we want to share with you is Place the Animals in the Barn, a simple literacy activity for preschoolers.

This activity is so simple but covers a few essential skills our little ones need to work on.

This activity is great for teaching/ reviewing:

• Animals on the farm
• Animals and their young
• Letter recognition
• Letter sounds 
• Building vocabulary 
• Hand-eye coordination
• Fine motor skills
• Concentration
• Counting farm animals and their feet

What you need to recreate this simple activity:

• Pencil 
• Journal/Paper
• Markers 
• Farm animal stickers ( You can also print pictures and glue them into the Barn.)

How to create this simple activity:

This activity is simple and very straightforward.
All you need to do is draw and colour the structure of a barn and draw lines in the middle to create spaces for the farm animal stickers or pictures to be glued on.

Use a blue marker to write the initial letter of each animal name so that as your little one is working it is standing out for reviewing letter sounds. Use a black marker to write the other letters of each word.

Cut out your stickers/pictures for each animal name, and your activity is ready for your little one.

How to present your child with this simple activity:

A great way to introduce a concept to young children is to provide them with a hands-on experience. When children learn through their senses, the learning is rich and lasting. 

As the popular quote states, “ Tell me, and I forget. Teach me, and I remember. Involve me, and I learn.”

We read two books about animals on the farm.

After reading, I invited the girls to play with a simple sensory setup of black beans and farm animals in bins.

While the girls played, we discussed the following: 

• Animals and their babies 

• The food we get from the animals on the farm: Example: cows provide us with milk and beef. We also discussed some products we use cows milk to make and how we use milk in our home.
• We discussed the food the farmers feed the animals on the farm and pretended to feed the farm animals by counting scoops of feed for them.
• We also did a lot of singing, going over all the sounds of the animals on the farm.
• I took some farm animals from our bins, and I called the names of each animal, and the girls identified the sound they were hearing at the beginning of each word and shared with me the letter that was making the specified sounds.
• I then presented the girls with our simple journal activity and they were able to identify each word and place the animals in the barns on their own.

Send us pictures of your little ones doing this activity so that we can share them in this article!😊

We do hope you find this activity useful. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us by sending us a message or visiting us @learning.stepbystep on Instagram, Learning Step By Step on Facebook and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for educational resources that will help you and your littles on their learning journey as they continue to Learn Step By Step!

Thank you for being here!

Kimberlee and the Learning Step By Step Team.