Montessori Grammar Farm With Legos

Spiderman and Batman looove Legos. So instead of a conventional farm, I decided to set up the Lego Duplo farm for grammar work! Inspired, if I do say so myself :)

To make it more interesting, the boys added some construction vehicles, some rocks and pebbles for the vehicles (of course), and some brown crinkle paper as dirt. They are nothing if not creative, especially when it comes to construction work!

As we already had the pebbles, I decided to throw in some felt pond and stream. And some felt grass for the cows!

Wait, why not add the chicken coop, or the Lego stables?

How about some Playmobil additions from the toy bin? More the merrier!

 I think I had more fun than the kids setting up the farm! 
We need to add some crops and a scarecrow next. 

Grammar Farm

Batman had a lot of fun labeling the nouns. He created his own labels for nouns he could spell, and that were not yet prepared by mom, like pond, duck, hay, fish, well ......
We talked about adjectives used to describe the nouns. Some of the adjectives are quite simple to spell as well, like red barn, green grass, fat pig etc, so he made those labels as well.

Spiderman contributed by telling me the beginning sounds of the words.


As Spiderman is not quite ready for the grammar work yet, we used the farm to some other good use. 

Extension ideas for the farm

 

• Animals and their sounds
• Animals and their babies (hen-chick, pig-piglet)
• What goes with this animal activity: hen-egg, cow-milk, sheep-wool, dog-bone etc. I made up some more from the Playmobil additions: bird-nest, squirrels-acorns, fish-pond, leaf-tree, bunny-carrot etc.
• We talked about what kind of animals live in the barn. In addition to the ones that came with the barn, Batman thought of mice and spiders.
• What kind of animals might live in a tree? The Superheros came up with birds, squirrels, bugs. Batman mentioned in passing that a red-eyed tree frog might be in one, but only if the tree is in a rainforest. Hmm, another thread to explore!!
•  What can we find around a pond/lake?
• Batman came up with a mystery story of the missing duckling, solved by the crime fighting super-heros!
•  Batman wanted to know if the hens are carnivores or herbivores? The answer is omnivore, as they eat seeds and small insects!
•  This prompted a discussion about what the farm animals eat. Somehow, I remember some mention of organic in there...

 

How about some math at the farm?

 

• We had tons of fun with counting, additions and subtractions - with the apples on the tree and basket, the ducklings in and out of the pond, the chicken and hen around the coop, the guinea pigs, the pebbles in the dump truck....
• We came up with our own stories. Two ducklings waddled out of the pond,  how many were left?
• Five apples were picked from the tree, how many still on the tree?
• If six apples from the basket were used to bake an apple pie, how many are left?
• Some scary stories like if a fox came and ate a few chicken, (I think Batman was thinking about the Henny Penny story!) how many were left?
• Spiderman insisted the fox was friends with all the farm animals! 

The Montessori Grammar Farm does not have to be a farm.  It could be any small world play idea, like small sensory boxes, a dollhouse or a treehouse, a zoo, or even a Lego construction zone! 

These are some of the products you see in the post:



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