Farm Animals Storytime

Okay, I’ll admit it. This is one of my absolute favorite storytime themes.

Books

This Little Chick by John Lawrence

Go Sleep in Your Own Bed by Candace Fleming

Clip-Clop by Nicola Smee

Peek-a-Moo by Marie Torres Cimarusti

Fox on the Loose by Matthew Porter

Activities

“Five Little Chicks”

I made the cutest flannel for this one. “Five little anything” is a great flannel for toddlers. I perfer when they count up (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) rather than down (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) because toddlers are still learning the basics. However, you can counter that by periodically asking, “How many are there now?” and counting together.

“Five Little Chicks” 
Five little chicks went out to play
Over in the barnyard they wanted to stay
Mama Chick called to end the day
But only 1 little chick came home that way.

four, three, two…
One little chick is out to play
Over in the barnyard she wanted to stay
Mama chick called to end the day
Now all the little chicks are asleep in the hay.

“Five Pigs So Squeaky Clean”

Here’s another farm animals flannel. I strictly only do one flannel for toddler storytime, if that because flannels are a magnet for walking tots.

“Five Pigs so Squeaky Clean” 
Five pigs so squeaky clean
Cleanest you have ever seen
Oink! Oink!
One jumped into the mud
Landed with a biggggg thud

Then there were only four clean squeaky pigs!

Three, two, one… none!

Ten Little Hatching Eggs

You can make anything with a cardboard and a x-acto knife. For this activity, I made a little “nest” to put eggs in (egg shakers, to be exact!). It also has 10 little chicks that you can pop-up from inside the box. First we sing “10 Little Eggs” while we put in the egg shakers insie the box and then we sing “10 Little Chicks” when they “hatch.” The hay is just hot-glued raffia ribbon you can get at any craft store.

I used a hen puppet to sit on top as well. Super cute and the kids loved playing with it after storytime.

“10 Little Hatching Eggs” 
1 little, 2 little, 3 little eggs
4 little, 5 little, 6 little eggs
7 little, 8 little, 9 little eggs,
10 little eggs in the nest!

1 little, 2 little, 3 little chicks,
4 little, 5 little, 6 little chicks,
7 little, 8 little, 9 little chicks,
10 little chicks hatching out!

“Old Macdonald Had a Farm”

Do you really need to lyrics to this one?

Conclusion

There’s about 5 million activities out there you coul do for this theme. These are just a few of the ones that work well for me!