The Farm

There are probably some people that would break the theme "The Farm" into a week each of cows, pigs, and ducks.  There are probably enough books featuring each animal to do so.  Instead, we lump them all together and have one SUPER AWESOME week of stories. 

Punk Farm by Jarret J. Krosoczka. Farm animals by day, punk band by night. Will they get caught by the farmer?  It's near impossible to read this book.  Luckily, there's a great online resource for the book where they have the song! (Well, songs - there's also Punk Farm Goes on Tour, which is pretty cool too)

Baby Danced the Polka by Karen Beaumont. Maybe not the first book you'd think of when it comes to farm, but it's great! It's lift the flap, and it rhymes, so I have kids try to guess the word (which is an animal) at the end of the verse.  I always establish that they understand rhyming words first, of course.  There are always at least one or two kids who get it and get the ball rolling, even if the rest take a little longer to catch up.

The Cow Buzzed by Andrea Zimmerman. I haven't used this book in awhile, just because it can be a bit lengthy. It's about a bee who brings a cold with him to a farm.  When animals catch the cold, they also catch the sounds of the animal before them.  I like to do it at the beginning of the school year to emphasize to kids the need to cover their mouths when they cough and sneeze.

Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin. The animals find and old typewriter in the barn, and decide to start making the demands. The farmer refuses the demands, and the cows go on strike.  Eventually the chickens join in and the duck is the neutral party. The kids love saying "Click, clack, moooo", but it can be really hard to break their cycle once they get going.

Pigs to the Rescue by John Himmelman. This series of books is so cute.  In case you're not familiar, there's also one for chickens and another for cows. I like the pig one though, because in contrast to the other two, the pigs are total screw-ups.  The path to hell is paved with good intentions, and while these pigs have the best of intentions to help out, they ruin everything.  I get the kids to help me out with the book by yelling out "Pigs to the rescue!"

Other great books include:

Duck on a Bike by David Shannon.

The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash by Trinka Hakes Noble.

The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson

Hogwash by Karma Wilson.

There are also a TON of songs and fingerplays you can do for this theme, such as Old MacDonald, Down on Grandpa's Farm, and 6 Little Ducks. Not to mention nursery rhymes like Hey Diddle Diddle, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Hickety Pickety, Mary Had a Little Lamb, etc.

Cooking with Kids: Farm to Table Edition

So to explain how I came up with the themes for all these Cooking with Kids programs, what I did is pretty much list all the books that I thought I could pull recipes from (or knew already had recipes). Then I started grouping them together in whatever way I could to squeeze a theme out of them. Sometimes it was easier than others.  Farm to Table wasn't hard, but most people would argue that you don't exactly "farm" bananas anywhere in the US.  Fair point. It pretty much should have been called Fruits and Vegetables, and we probably would've gotten the same amount of attendance.  Which is to say, hardly any at all.  Actually, I only had 2 grandmothers and their grandchildren.  Why the sudden drop-off in attendance?  I HAVE NO IDEA.  Maybe all the parents knew their kids were WAY pickier than I realized and they wouldn't try what we were making. *shrug* On to the books!

Carrot Soup by John Segal. This is a story about a rabbit who LOVES carrot soup. He plants the carrots, waters them, etc. When it comes time to harvest them, they're gone.  He asks all the animals, they all deny taking them and say he should ask someone else.  At the end of the day, he goes home dejected and carrotless to find that his friends harvested the carrots, made the soup, and have thrown him a surprise party. There's a recipe for carrot soup in the back of the book, and while I was unsure how it would taste, we went for it.  OMG!  Have you ever had carrot soup before?  It was so good!  It was basically carrots, onions, and celery sauteed together and simmered in chicken stock, then blended together. All the adults in the building liked it.

Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington. I talked about this book in my post about apple-themed story time. Simple book about an apple farmer harvesting her apples, making baked goods, and then selling them at the farmers' market in the city. There are several recipes using apples in the back, but we decided to keep it simple and make the applesauce. No, the library does not have the resources to do this kind of cooking, so both my coworker and I had to go home and do this. Applesauce was a little easier to convince the kids to eat. Both this and the carrot soup were almost impossible to do a cooking demonstration on though, so instead we focused on the next book and recipe.

Gladys Goes Out to Lunch by Derek Anderson. Again, another book I've talked about in another post. Gladys the gorilla loves bananas, but goes in search of something else to eat when she smells the most delicious food. She searches high and low, and finally she finds it - banana bread. There is a recipe for this in the back of the book (so convenient!), and since I *can* make bread in a toaster/convection oven that's what we did. 

I had two 6 yr olds helping me, so needless to say, it was an adventure.  I set one to cutting up the bananas with a butter knife, while the other helped me measure out the ingredients. I have to state at this point that we had slightly green bananas because dummy me didn't buy them far enough ahead of time. Multitasking with two kids is certainly interesting, but I try to do it when I can to show that it *can* be done! (Though I'm sure most moms already know that).   Their bread may not have been as uniform as mine was, but it still tasted great.  The kids loved it of course because it was sweet.

We always have handouts of the recipes, and when possible, other books that fit the theme.  Here's what we came up with for this one:

Farmer Will Allen and the growing table by Jacqueline Briggs Martin

Green beans, potatoes, and even tomatoes: what is in the vegetable group? By Brian P. Cleary

Growing vegetable soup by Lois Ehlert

I eat a rainbow by Bobbie Kalman

The vegetables we eat by Gail Gibbons

Apples grow on a tree by Mari C. Schuh

Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candace Fleming

The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin

Eating the alphabet: fruits and vegetables from A to Z by Lois Ehlert

Gregory, the terrible eater by Mitchell Sharmat

A fruit and vegetable man by Roni Schotter

Pick, pull, snap!: where once a flower bloomed by Lola M. Schaefer

Tap the magic tree by Christie Matheson

How are you peeling? by Saxton Freymann