Build Your Own Farm

A couple of weeks ago I went into my daughter's Reception class and organised an activity for them, turning two tuff trays into a sensory seaside and a small world farmyard. My son loved the pictures so I promised I'd do similar trays for him at home. 

I did an outdoors Octonauts seaside tray for them in the glorious after-school sunshine a few days ago and it was a great hit. But I decided to let them build the farm for themselves. We did this one inside so they could leave it out for a few days as it is forecast rain tomorrow!

The stone liner was the only thing already in the tray - cut from a metre of pvc from Dunelm - and the loose parts were left next to it. There was various cardboard boxes, plastic animals and tractors, shredded paper, stones, masking tape, out-of-date coffee plus some Easter leftovers - stickers, chicks, bunnies and eggs.

   

I didn't give them any direction but stuck around to help if they needed it. They asked me to make some enclosures like I had for the school's farm by cutting off the bottom inch of some boxes, turning them inside out to hide the writing and glueing them with my glue gun. I turned a box inside out for their farmhouse too. Other than that it was all their own work and boy did they get stuck into it!

      

They made a barn with opening doors and a thatched roof and gave the farmhouse opening doors, windows and solar panels on the roof! Carrot stickers were coloured in and planted in the coffee soil as they had seen me do but they used different coloured carrots and made up their own names for the veggies.

A duck pond was cut out of blue paper and then, upon discovering there was only one plastic duck, they started drawing ducks and other animals on stones as well as adding various other water based creatures to the pond...it ended up being more of a zoo than a farm to be fair!

   

The masking tape was initially used to mark out areas of the farm then Ollie decided to add a road leading up to the farm, then a car park, then a whole network of roads across the floor. The toy cars were then sought out and a new aspect to their playing began!

I will definitely be trying this approach more often. They had so much fun setting it up and I think they will probably play with it more due to their pride in their own creation!