Putting the Farm to Bed for the Winter

Our last Farm School day started out as a wet day. This meant that there were some great big puddles to explore. We did have to talk about walking and not splashing in them, as splashing can make both you and another friend wet and uncomfortable.

In the greenhouse we learned about chickens. Farm Teacher Leslee read a book about chickens, and we all found the different body parts on our own chicken picture.

We learned about how the baby chick grows in the egg, and that it takes 21 days before it is ready to hatch. 

We played a game where we cracked open pretend eggs that showed a picture of the baby chick as it would look on each day. The eggs were numbered, and then we had to find the matching number on the egg holder. This proved interesting, finding numbers such as 12 and 21, but we helped each other and figured it out.

The last egg, number 21, had a little baby chick inside it, that made a peeping sound.

Then Farm Teacher Leslee brought out a real hen, and we got to touch her and look closely at her. She even has a warm spot on her belly that doesn't have any feathers. She puts this warm skin against the eggs to help the baby chicks grow.

We all got to crack an egg into a pan. We learned how to scoop up any bits of eggshell that drop intothe pan using another piece of shell.

Then Farm Teacher Leslee cooked them up with some fresh kale from the field. They were delicious!

After snack, we read as story about a chicken and a worm and how they are the same (they both have crops and gizzards and they lay eggs). We learned that their manure or castings (aka: poop) is good for the soil. The Orcas sang their Decomposer Song:

The decomposers are our friends.

They're called the FBI

That's fungus, and bacteria, and invertebrates,

My, oh my!

We had learned in school that invertebrates don't have back bones, and after feeling all of our friend's bumpy backbones, we had looked at worms from our worm bin to see what an invertebrate looks like.

We went out to the field to dig up some soil.

Back in the greenhouse, we examined the soil carefully to see what was in it.

We used our magnifying glasses. We found roots, and rocks, and even a potato or two. We were looking for decomposers.

Finally we found some! A worm, a centipede, a potato bug.

We took our soil back to the filed, and then we pulled up some weeds.

We got a lot of weeds from the potato patch.

We carried them to the compost pile so that the decomposers could do their work to turn them back into good stuff for the soil.

Then we said goodnight to the potato patch. We covered it up with a nice warm blanket of leaves we had gathered from preschool. We know the decomposers will turn these leaves into healthy food for the plants.

We sand our Goodnight Farm Song (to the tune of "Twinkle Little Star"):

Goodnight, goodnight to the farm,

Goodnight plants,

Goodnight chickens,

Goodnight, goodnight squawky turkeys,

Goodnight Farm Teachers,

Goodnoght greenhouses.

Goodnight, goodnoght to the farm,

We will see you in the spring.