Farm Craft for Toddler: Color and Glue Paper Animals

Toddlers are typically fascinated with all kinds of animals and the places in which they live. Teachers can focus on one specific group of animals by organizing a brief farm lesson and assisting the children in assembling a paper farm craft toddler project. For this farm craft, toddler teachers will need to do some prep work.

When planning this farm craft toddler teachers can decorate bulletin boards with pictures of cows eating grass in a pasture, chickens resting in a coop, pigs playing in the mud, and horses, sheep, and goats walking in a barn. During the lesson, teachers can hold up additional pictures or flash cards of farm structures and animals for the children to observe. When showing the toddlers each picture, teachers can introduce the class to an animal by making brief descriptive statements:

"This is a cow. The cow is black and white. The cow says 'moo'."

"This is a sheep. The sheep is gray and fuzzy. The sheep says 'baa'."

At the end of the lesson, teachers can prepare the children for starting the craft. "All of these animals live on a farm. We are going to make our own farms now". Read more toddler farm lessons at Bright Hub.

Materials needed:

Photocopies of farm template (picture can include a barn, pasture, chicken coop, and hay bales)

Paper cut-outs from farm animal templates (cows, chickens, pigs, horses, goats, and sheep)--1 of each per child

glue sticks

buckets of crayons (for coloring farm background and animals)

Directions:

1) Give each toddler a copy of the farm template. Point out the various parts of a farm--explain how the animals sleep in the barn, graze and run through the pasture, and eat hay and grass. Ask the children to color their farm pictures, and provide a completed picture for reference so that the toddlers will know which colors to use (green grass, yellow hay, etc.).

2) Provide each student with copies of the six paper farm animals. Ask if the children remember the names of the animals, then allow the toddlers to start coloring. Encourage the children to use the appropriate colors for their farm animals (pink for pigs, black or brown for horses, gray or black for sheep, etc.).

3) Pass out glue sticks, and assist the toddlers in gluing the animals onto different locations of the farm background. Allow the children to decide where they would like to place their individual animals: in the barn or out on the pasture.

4) When the glue has dried, label the top of each farm picture with the child's name (ex.: "Sally's Farm", "Johnny's Farm").

Teachers can use this craft in several educational ways. Toddlers will become familiar with the appearance, names, and sounds of animals who live on the farm. This craft can be planned as a supplement to reading books about pigs, chickens, and other farm animals.