Need ideas for presentation at preschool!

[HonoluluMom]

Let me start off with saying that I'm not a very creative person.

DD's preschool class has asked each parent to do something for the class for 1 hour and based on a particular theme. Some examples given - read books, do a craft, give a presentation, chaperone an excursion.

We'll my theme is Animals on the Farm. Here are some of my ideas that I could use some feedback. I would also appreciate suggestions, please!

- Read a few books and then do a craft (book and craft suggestions appreciated, as I don't have Animals on the Farm based books at home, other than Old MacDonald)

- Zoo outreach program (Zoo personnel comes to the classroom to do a presentation, but it costs $100+. Is this going overboard?)

- Hire a petting zoo to come to the preschool and ask farmer to do a short presentation (probably wouldn't be able to do this due to local regulations, but I'm looking into it)

[pinkmomagain]

Wowza. I'm speechless. I was a parent at a co-op preschool for two of my kids and had to help out in the classroom frequently, but never had to do something like this! Do they want you to pay for the zoo programs or would it come from the school's budget?

Honestly, for 3 yos I would maybe read a book, sing a song, and then have a few different very simple activity tables that they could rotate around. Animal puzzles, coloring some animals, and maybe some plastic animals they could pretend with.

An hour can be a looooooooong time with 3yos in a classroom.

[HonoluluMom]

Wowza. I'm speechless. I was a parent at a co-op preschool for two of my kids and had to help out in the classroom frequently, but never had to do something like this! Do they want you to pay for the zoo programs or would it come from the school's budget?

The parent activity, I believe, is paid for by the parent so I was thinking that doing the zoo outreach program was a little too much.


Honestly, for 3 yos I would maybe read a book, sing a song, and then have a few different very simple activity tables that they could rotate around. Animal puzzles, coloring some animals, and maybe some plastic animals they could pretend with.

Rotating activities sounds like a great idea!


An hour can be a looooooooong time with 3yos in a classroom.

Yes, this is what I'm worried about. I'm afraid I'll run out of things to do with the children, which is why it sounded good to hire someone to do the presentation.

[zag95]

You could do some tactile stations- what do cows eat? (Grass, Hay), Chickens, goats, etc?

How about doing a song with the kids-or you might see if high-five magazine online has an action poem around the theme of farms.

They could color pictures of farm animals or use a potato (that has already been cut) to do stamps with paint.

[rin]

I'd do a mix & match of activities like:

*start off with reading some sort of animal/farm-based book. I bet Richard Scarry has something that would be good! This could get you 10 minutes, especially if you start off with a minute or two of Q & A (e.g. "today we'll be talking about animals on the farm! has anyone here been to a farm? What kinds of animals live there?" etc etc)

*make a playlist of farm & animal-based songs (Old MacDonald, Raffi's "Five Little Frogs", "Three Blind Mice", etc), bring in an ipod & speakers or a laptop, and do a sing-along session. This could totally take another 10-15 minutes, depending on how many songs you do.

*bring in some coloring sheets of farm animals and let them go to town w/crayons. Again, I bet this could be 10-15 minutes.

*If you'll have time to go into the classroom before they're all there (e.g. while they're on the playground), an egg hunt could be fun. Talk about the kinds of things that we get from farm animals, how chickens lay eggs, do they like eggs, etc, how if they lived on a farm they'd have to collect eggs every day, then do an egg hunt. You could either do this w/plastic eggs, or even big cardboard eggs painted/colored on one side.

[hillview]

Maybe a game of duck duck goose
2 songs -- old mcdonald had a farm (each child picks an animal/sound); there was a farmer had a dog and bingo was his nameo
love the stations idea
songs again
more duck duck goose
game of leap frog (they have frogs on the farm!)
eat some fruit/veggies from the farm
bring in smelly farm things (house poop! fresh cut grass! mud (does that smell?)) or maybe a sensory thing -- guess what it is (hay in a bag; dirt in a bag; grain for animal food in a bag

GOod luck sounds great!