If you want to create your own homeschool farming curriculum, I have some great resources. Too, grab more farm ideas on my page Free Charlotte’s Web Homeschool Unit Study and Fun Hands-on Ideas.
If you’re looking for a fun and diverse book to use as a spine or main book for your farming curriculum, look at Farm Anatomy by Julia Rothman.
Her entire series is incredible and full of beautiful illustrations and a wealth of information tucked into each page.
I love to just flip through the pages and admire them, learning much myself at the same time.
They are easily adaptable as a main spine to your DIY curriculum without any textbooks or worksheets.
Too, I’ll not only share some fun ideas about farming, but your kids will love making this adorable clothespin sheep.
Even your older kids will love it.
7 Topics Study for Homeschool Farming Curriculum
Using just the Farm Anatomy Book you can create a homeschooling farming curriculum that covers all these seven topics and more.
1. How to Break Ground
In this section cover farm terminology, topsoil, nutrients, composting and acreage.
2. Raised in a Barn
Learn about barns and other structures, styles, features, uses, chicken coops, brooders, fencing, sheep sheds, and feeders.
3. Tools of the Trade
Additionally, understand farm tools. Include big equipment like tractors and plows and hand tools and wood splitting as well.
4. Plant a Seed
Learn about everything from seeds to frost dates, and vegetable varieties to good and bad bugs.
5. Separating the Sheep from the Goats
Next, learn livestock terminology, types and labeling of their parts, anatomy of a beehive, comb styles, breeds, harnesses, and shearing sheep.
6. Country Dining
Delve into dairy, breadmaking, cuts of meat, root cellars, old fashioned country kitchens, how to cut up a chicken, build a smokehouse, canning, and making cheese.
7. Spinning a Yarn
In the final chapter you will learn about shearing, natural dyes, making rag rugs, candles, and other farm tasks.
Farm Themed Read Aloud Books
The only other book I might suggest is a farm-themed read-aloud to enjoy together.
You could also assign your older students the reading independently.
Resources and Books for a Study about Farming
Add some of these fun books and resources to create your own curriculum about farming or for a homeschool unit study topic about farming.
Learn the difference between a farrow and a barrow, and what distinguishes a weanling from a yearling. Country and city mice alike will delight in Julia Rothman’s charming illustrated guide to the curious parts and pieces of rural living. Dissecting everything from the shapes of squash varieties to how a barn is constructed and what makes up a beehive to crop rotation patterns, Rothman gives a richly entertaining tour of the quirky details of country life.
Some Pig. Humble. Radiant. These are the words in Charlotte's Web, high up in Zuckerman's barn. Charlotte's spiderweb tells of her feelings for a little pig named Wilbur, who simply wants a friend. They also express the love of a girl named Fern, who saved Wilbur's life when he was born the runt of his litter.
While Laura Ingalls grows up on the prairie, Almanzo Wilder is living on a big farm in New York State. Here Almanzo and his brother and sisters help with the summer planting and fall harvest. In winter there is wood to be chopped and great slabs of ice to be cut from the river and stored. Time for fun comes when the jolly tin peddler visits, or best of all, when the fair comes to town.
Almanzo wishes for just one thing—his very own horse—and he must prove that he is ready for such a big responsibility.
Twelve-year-old Sophie Brown feels like a fish out of water when she and her parents move from Los Angeles to the farm they’ve inherited from a great-uncle. But farm life gets more interesting when a cranky chicken appears and Sophie discovers the hen can move objects with the power of her little chicken brain: jam jars, the latch to her henhouse, the entire henhouse.... And then more of her great-uncle’s unusual chickens come home to roost. Determined, resourceful Sophie learns to care for her flock, earning money for chicken feed, collecting eggs. But when a respected local farmer tries to steal them, Sophie must find a way to keep them (and their superpowers) safe.
Strawberries—big, ripe, and juicy. Ten-year-old Birdie Boyer can hardly wait to start picking them. But her family has just moved to the Florida backwoods, and they haven't even begun their planting. "Don't count your biddies 'fore they're hatched, gal young un!" her father tells her.
Making the new farm prosper is not easy. There is heat to suffer through, and droughts, and cold snaps. And, perhaps most worrisome of all for the Boyers, there are rowdy neighbors, just itching to start a feud. The land was theirs, but so were its hardships.
Explore the workings of a small-scale, organic family farm and experience the rhythm of farm life. In the spring, visit the chicken coop, till the fields, and tour the farm machinery. When summer comes, plant corn, meet the pollinators, and head to the county fair. In the fall, make pies and preserves, harvest pumpkins, and put the fields to sleep. Winter activities include trimming and pruning the orchard, seed shopping, and baking bread.
A young girl delights in her grandmother’s stories of days gone by, sparked by keepsakes and simple questions, Grandma shares marvelous stories of mischief , discovery, and laughter, such as the time she accidentally lost the family buggy. Part of the bestselling Grandma’s Attic series, these charming tales—updated with delightful new illustrations—will whisk you away to another time and place.
Caddie Woodlawn is a real adventurer. She'd rather hunt than sew and plow than bake, and tries to beat her brother's dares every chance she gets. Caddie is friends with Indians, who scare most of the neighbors—neighbors who, like her mother and sisters, don't understand her at all.
Fill bushel baskets with figures representing veggies, from corn and broccoli to onions and pumpkins
Playmat with farm signs includes images of essential colors and shapes
However, hands-on activities make for the best part of any curriculum which you put together.
Hands-on activities makes learning stick and stirs your child’s imagination.
Homeschool Farming Curriculum Hands-on Activities
- Grab some farm animals for use as counters for math, dramatic play with blocks, as a themed sensory bin, art inspiration, farm animal sorting, or a close-up look at farm animals they might not otherwise get to see.
- Easy Seeds and Gardening Unit Study for Kids (Middle – Upper Elementary)
- Even if you don’t have the space to plant, you can plant several types of vegetables in containers, if not you can still grab seeds to check out the size and information on the packet. Dollar Tree is a great resource for seeds.
- How to Easily Garden Plan With Kids Using LEGO
- Visit a local farm store and check out the different types of feed, tools, and other items that farmers might need.
- How to Plan And Start an Easy Gardening Unit Study for Kids
- Plan a garden or large farm plot on graph paper to plant, or just pretend.
- Gardening Projects For Homeschool Easy Composting With the Amazing Dr. George Carver (Free Printable About Composting)
- Check into visiting local farms, dairies, and farmers’ markets to study farm life up close.
- Play a fun farm-themed game to learn math, and encourage taking turns, reading, and following directions.
- Free Printable Strawberries Lapbook and Fun Homeschool Unit Study Ideas
- 7 Honey Bee Activities And Explore a Bee Hive With Felt Activity.
- Practice milking a cow with a simple rubber glove in this fun activity.
- Does your child love horses? Weave this Horse Unit Study into the farming study.
- Learn about cloth dyeing.
Finally, look at how to make this adorable sheep craft, but first here are a few fun facts about sheep.
How to Make a Clothespin Sheep Craft
Next, look at a few facts about sheep.
Quick Facts about Sheep
- Lamb is the name for a baby sheep up to one year.
- The ram is the male sheep.
- Ewe (pronounced, you) is the female sheep.
- Hair on a sheep is called wool and all the wool on sheep is called the fleece.
- Sheep are used for more than just their wool.
- Some by products of sheep are used in buttons, cosmetics, hand soap and medicine.
Now, grab these supplies for this fun sheep craft.
You will need:
- 2 wooden clothespins
- Wool roving or yarn
- Black paint
- Scrap cardboard
- Black felt
- Hot glue
Cut cardboard, a leftover Amazon box works great, into roughly the shape of a bean like this.
Paint the “head” and slightly into the body black.
Paint both clothespins all the way around approximately ¾ of the way up from the end that you squeeze.
Allow all the paint to dry completely.
Place clothespins on cardboard cutout, push up to the spring, and adjust until it can stand.
To wrap with the wool roving pull long thin lengths off and wrap all around, covering the cardboard up to the head completely and secure the end with a dot of hot glue.
To cover with yarn, follow the same process but with one long string of yarn, wrapping and changing directions until fully covered, and glue the end down.
Cut small ear shapes out of black felt and hot glue to the sides of the head.
You can make a whole herd of sheep from different colors and textures of yarn and wool as you learn all about breeds, shearing, and more.
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