Farm Animal Baby Lap Time!

I had so much fun having baby lap time at the Covenant House/The ARC in Washington, DC! Today's theme was farm animals and I read two board books.

Because I had a small group of seven babies I was able to read Farm by Charlie Gardner and give each of the babies a chance to feel all of the textures: the soft fluffy ducklings, the hairy goats, sheep with woolly fleece, pigs with pink shiny skin, horses with shiny silver buckets, and more! All of the babies loved this book.

I didn't read the next book Old MacDonald Had a Farm by James Dean, instead I sang the book along with the babies and their caregivers! In this revised version of Old MacDonald had a farm by James Dean, Pete the Cat sings the traditional verses and adds a few verses of his own. Everybody loved this book!
The rest of the baby lap time consisted of songs, rhymes, bounces and finger plays.
Because they were teaching the babies about farm animals, I left the following board books for them to read together:

Barnyard Banter by Denise Fleming

Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown

Big Fat Hen by Keith Baker

How kind! by Mary Murphy

Farm by James Brown

Baby cheep! cheep! by Dawn Sirett

Farm Animals Story Time!

The first book that I read was Grumpy Goat by Brett Helquist. This story is about a goat who stays to himself and doesn't want to play with the pigs, cow, or sheep. Then one day he discovers a bright yellow dandelion at the top of the hill that reminds of something, but what is it? The children immediately guessed that it was the sun! He takes care of his dandelion every single day, watering it and trimming back the grass. He starts to become friendly with the sheep, the pigs, and the cow. Then one day the unthinkable happens! All of the petals on his dandelion blow away! Grumpy Goat is devastated, but fortunately he and the rest of the animals find a field full of dandelions.
This story wasn't as interactive as most of the stories that I pick, but the children did learn a new vocabulary word - dandelion! Also, I had the children identify the pigs, cow, and sheep and we counted them together. Most of the children were attentive to the story.
The next story that I read was The Cow Said Meow by John Himmelman. The children absolutely loved this story! A cow sees the cat get into the warm snug house when it is raining by saying, "meow." The cow, who is drenched, says "meow" to get into the house and the other animals follow. One by one the pig, chicken, donkey, goat, and duck get into the safe shelter of the house. The children had a lot of fun making animal sounds with me!
The third story that I did was a rhyme that involved the farm animals on popsicle sticks. I held up each animal and asked the children to identify the animal and make the sound that the animal would make. This was a huge hit! I also recited the following rhyme:
I had a little dog
The nicest dog yet;
and that little dog
was my very own pet.
Then the little dog said, "bow-wow, bow-wow!"
I changed the rhyme slightly for each animal.
The credit for the rhyme goes to the Prince George's County Memorial Library system.
The following is a list of alternate titles that I chose, but did not read:
Five Little Chicks by Nancy Tafuri
Blue Goose by Nancy Tafuri
Moo! by David LaRochelle