We turned our puppet stand into a Farmer's Market Stand - we painted a poster board red and blue stripes, trimmed the edges to scallop it and put it on top of the puppet stand as an awning. We added a pretend cash register, a "for sale" list, and to encourage writing, a clipboard and pencils. We put pictures of healthy foods on the front.
We used play food in baskets to display what was for sale. We turned our train depot (from the beginning of the year) into the front of a farmhouse.
We turned the back of two shelves into a pumpkin patch, as part of the market. The children painted two different size pumpkins for our patch.
Another shelf was turned into a duck pond. We covered the shelf with light blue bulletin board paper, and used blue paint to give it texture. Green fringed bulletin board paper was used to create grass at the edge of the pond. The children painted their ducks, then applied yellow tissue paper for "feathers". Craft feathers could also be used. The book read to go along with this project was One Duck Stuck by Phyllis Root.
We also decorated with real pumpkins, a scarecrow and some apples.
In my next blog post, I will share how we brought the Farm to other centers in our classroom. I hope this inspires you to enhance your unit on Farm when you teach about it.
~Christa~
