Exploring Outdoors - The Farm

It's Spring (yes officially now and not just in our minds) and for me that doesn't just mean flowers and warmer days but also baby animals. We're lucky enough that even though we live in a town the country side isn't far away and it's filled with farms including many that we can go and visit.

Near my parents is our favourite one - it's small enough that J and T don't get overwhelmed but also has a variety of different animals that J enjoys seeing. As a bonus it also has an indoor play ground with a fun climbing slide built into and around some trees (for us the cakes and lunches are delicious as well).

We haven't visited the farm since the summer as it closes down for the winter and becomes a working farm - but I was amazed that J remembered it and knew exactly where he wanted to go and what animals that he wanted to visit first. It was T's first time alert and interested in what was going on - I was amazed by her language development during the day - first new word in a long while was "LOOK" at everything that she could see - we'd be going along and suddenly have "LOOK" and her pointing furiously at something.

The farm is a great opportunity for children to connect with what we see in books, rhymes and in our small world play (can you guess what we've been playing a lot of after the visit!) and introducing babies to them fosters a respect of animals and also is a great way for them to connect what we do at home with real life - unless you are lucky enough to live on a farm a lot of the animals are difficult to meet everyday. T meet a week old lamb at one of the feeding sessions it was the first time she had seen another animal apart from our family dog close up she was in awe of it and kept touching it looking at me and then returning to touch it - she was so gentle as well.

The farm also brought up lots of questions from J as we went around, there was questions about why some lambs were with the mummy sheep and others were on their own having a bottle of milk, why 1 pig had lots of babies and the other had only 2 babies it was interesting as he didn't bring up the questions while he was at the farm instead it's been since we've got home and playing with his farm animals and farm.

The great part of the farm that we visit not only do they have animal encounters like we did with T and the Lambs but also some petting pens - the animals can escape away from the children behind ropes which even J understands that he can't go under but it's great he can interact with goats, chickens, roosters, huge rabbits (like toddler sized).

There are 2 very large roosters Captain Sparrow is one of them and he's J's favourites he follows him around and as soon as we arrived it was who he wanted to see (after the ducks on the way in). Of course no trip to the farm would be complete without a tractor ride

T's extended vocabulary now includes GOAT, ORSE and BABIT - I guess she's going to follow in my foot steps and be fascinated by animals as well.

Our book link this week is a real favourite Old MacDonald had a farm and a lift the flap. J loves the words and likes to sing along and tell me what sounds the animals make. T loves flipping the flaps in the book to reveal what is under them - she's very into interactive books at the moment, although any brightly coloured books with big pictures gets her attention as well.

To see where we linking up this week check out the side bar and why not pop along and have a look at the great sites that we love to link up and play with.

Author

Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, high school teacher and mum. Realising that life doesn't have to be put on hold and you don't just have to survive whilst the kids are young she shares ideas to inspire you to LIVE with the kids, with activities to do together, recipes to cook and enjoy and family travel to make memories to last a lifetime.