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Angel
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My kids want to learn more about farming. (We live on 15 acres in the middle of farm country, and my 3 yo is absolutely nuts about tractors. So now his big brother and sister -- ages 9.5 and 7 want in on the action.)
I'm looking for good biographies of agricultural pioneers, like John Deere and Cyrus McCormick -- picture books and/or chapter books. John Deere is a particularly important figure in our family because of his relationship with those green and yellow tractors.
Also, I'm still on the lookout for good picture book titles set on farms.
Any suggestions?
--Angela
Mom to 3+2 
Three Plus Two
Wild Things
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JennGM
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You probably already have it on the list, but Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder would be a must-read for your study. Either books on tape or read-aloud would be perfect.
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Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to  & ds1  '03 & ds2  '07
Family in Feast and Feria
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Angel
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Farmer Boy is one of our all-time favorites! In fact, my husband and I sometimes use it as a reference since Malone is only a few hours north of here. Since we've read it aloud several times now, I plan on putting our audio copy out for listening.
Here are some of the books we've already got in the basket:
Chapter Books:
Thimble Summer -- Elizabeth Enright
McBroom's Wonderful One Acre Farm -- Sid Fleischman
Strawberry Girl -- Lois Lenski
Miracles on Maple Hill -- Virginia Sorensen
(Farmer Boy -- audio)
Picture Books:
The Year At Maple Hill Farm
The Milk-Makers -- Gail Gibbons
Growing Seasons -- Elsie Lee Splear
Century Farm - Chris Peterson and Alvis Upitis
My 3 yo also has various DK books about tractors, which he will hopefully share with us, and then there's the All About John Deere tractor video which he watches every morning. Everyone in the house has it memorized by now. We also own There Goes a Tractor on video.
--Angela
Mom to 3+2
Three Plus Two
Wild Things
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MacBeth
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There are my favorite picture books on farming:
These are lovely--The "look inside" feature is active for these books--The Year at Maple Hill Farm and
Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm
Anno's Magic Seeds
The Complete Book of Farmyard Tales (Usborne)
And Beatrix Potter's books, too!
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MacBeth in NY
Don's wife since '88; "Mom" to the Fab 4
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wamegomom
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Your 9 y.o . could probably play quite a bit of one of the John Deere computer games. We bought "American Farmer" for my dh for Father's Day, as he grew up on a farm, was a vocational agriculture teacher, and then became disabled with a benign spinal cord tumor at only 23. He changed careers to banking, but I think he would give major bodily organs to farm again. I understand that high school vocational ag teachers use the John Deere games with students. You get a farm and have to manage a budget, care for animals, deal with weather and other crises (like the broken equipment that hounds farmers in real life!), manage hired help--all kinds of good experiences.
Mary Alice in Kansas
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MacBeth
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We love American Farmer here. It's one of our favorite computer time games. Economics, agriculture, husbandry, etc. all in one.
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MacBeth in NY
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Cay Gibson
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Angela,
Be sure to get a current copy of the Farmer's Almanac to look over with your children.
My First Little House books have:
Winter on the Farm
County Fair
Some other picture books would be:
Just Me by Marie Hall Ets
Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall would fit this nicely
And the one I highly recommend as an interaction tool with the kids is:
Cracked Corn and Snow Ice Cream: A Family Almanac by Nancy Willard-illustrated by Jane Dyer 
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Cay Gibson
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JennGM
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I love this picture book:
The Farmer in the Dell illustrated by Ilse Plume. While the text is only the words to the song, the drawings depict an Amish family in Pennsylvania Dutch country, depicting the change of seasons and a farmer's life. The colored penciled drawings are just delicious. Ds loved it, but so did I. The drawings were really just so delightful.
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Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to & ds1 '03 & ds2 '07
Family in Feast and Feria
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lapazfarm
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I really, really like "Ox Cart Man". I think you could do a whole unit on just that book!
"Click, Clack, Moo" is a good one, very funny.
A nice biography of George Washington Carver might be a super addition.
And what is that book with the really long title about growing popcorn and moving?
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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
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MacBeth
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lapazfarm wrote:
And what is that book with the really long title about growing popcorn and moving?
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The Huckabuck Family: and How They Raised Popcorn in Nebraska and Quit and Came Back. This is a definite favorite! Thanks for the reminder, Theresa!
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MacBeth in NY
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Dawn
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lapazfarm wrote:
| I really, really like "Ox Cart Man". I think you could do a whole unit on just that book! |
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Oh, I love that book!! It would make a wonderful farming or New England unit study (wheels turning ...)
I also like:
Little Farm by the Sea
From Dawn till Dusk
A Farm of Her Own
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Angel
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Ox-Cart Man is one of my 3 yo's favorite books -- thanks for the reminder! All these books seem like they'd appeal to my kids, so it looks like we're in good shape. I'd really like to check out the John Deere game, too (anything John Deere is a hit around here) but we still don't have our own computer up and running.  My husband is letting me use his laptop from work when he can. Hopefully, though, we'll be getting a new hard drive some time next week.
Thanks to everyone!
--Angela
Mom to 3+2
Three Plus Two
Wild Things
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TracyQ
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Angela,
I wrote a unit on the picture book, *All the Places to Love* by Patricia MacLachlan. It does have some activities and links on farming that might help out or give you some ideas. You can see it here:
All the Places to Love unit
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Tracy Q.
wife of Marty for 20 years, mom of 3 wonderful children (1 homeschool graduate, 1 12th grader, and a 9th grader),
homeschooling in 15th year in Buffalo, NY
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MacBeth
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TracyQ wrote:
Angela,
I wrote a unit on the picture book, *All the Places to Love* by Patricia MacLachlan. It does have some activities and links on farming that might help out or give you some ideas. You can see it here:
All the Places to Love unit
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Wonderful Unit, Tracy!!
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MacBeth in NY
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saintanneshs
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Hi Angela,
I have done a farm unit in the past with my little guys, all of whom have a love-love relationship with our JD tractors!(My 6yo informed my dh just this week that dh wouldn't be driving the tractors much longer because the 6yo would be taking over for him soon!)
Here are a few of the books we loved:
What a Wonderful Day to Be a Cow by Carolyn Lesser
Picking Apples & Pumpkins by Amy and Richard Hutchings
The Midnight Farm by Reeve Lindbergh
Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown
I'm Going to Be A Farmer by Edith Kunhardt
Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington (great for math concepts!!)
The Milk Makers by Gail Gibbons
A Cow, A Bee, A Cookie and Me (... how cookies are made with ingredients from a farm...can't remember author)
Extra Cheese, Please (how cheese is made, can't remember the author)
Milk From Cow to Carton by Aliki
See How They Grow: Pig (there's a whole non-fiction animal series by DK)
"The Cow" a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson
Chickens Aren't the Only Ones by Ruth Heller
Here are a few of the activities that we did with the unit:
*Fingerpainted mudy pink pigs
*Make shape pigs (circle head, circle snout & nostrils, circle eyes, triangle ears)
*Used plastic farm animals from Dollar Store for creative play and for Math (sorting, counting, measuring, ordinal #s, addition, subtraction and a Venn Diagram with colored painter's tape on the carpet to show different characteristics of the animals like size, colors, inside/outside living, etc)
*Made a mini-book of the months of the year on a farm (after reading What a Great Day to Be a Cow)
*After Apple Farmer Annie we made apple prints, did apple math (graphing some of the diff. apples we picked from the orchard and for learning about place value)
*For Art we studied Millet's paintings The Angelus The Gleaners, Shepherdess With Her Flock (all farm scenes)
*Played Hi-Ho-Cherry-O and called it Hi-Ho-Apple-O for math
*Discuss "habitat" and paint a farm mural
*Graph animals in The Midnight Farm book
*Read about Saint Joan of Arc (a farm girl who became a saint)and Saint Isidore the Farmer --geography, history, religion
*The Little House Series were our Read-aloud chapter books
*Nature Walk on our farm
*Make Big Book entitled "Who Lives on a Farm?"
*Bake Cookies following the recipe in A Cow, A Bee, A Cookie and Me (measurement)
*After Click Clack Moo the children narrated letters to a friend or family member
*Set up and play "Farm Market" with play produce (things grown and sold on a farm) and using play money and the cash register =math
*Do egg experiment: Put egg in glass, fill with fresh water. What does egg do? Add salt to water with egg still in it. What does egg do? (Keep pouring until egg rises) Why? Density: egg's density more than fresh water, less than salt water.
* Read George Washington Carver bio for kids and make peanut butter
*Make butter (shake heavy whipping cream in a mini baby food jar) science: liquid to solid
*Identifying "producers," "consumers," "goods," and "services" in farm economics
*Science experiment to teach that water pressure increases with depth. Punch three holes in a cardboard milk carton and cover them with 1 long piece of tape. Ask which hole will produce the longest stream of water. Fill carton with water and remove the tape (all at once). Observe. The greater the pressure, the greater the force with which it pushes (lowest hole makes farthest stream).
You can contact your local farm bureau office to ask what your state's Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation might have as far as free materials for teaching your older homeschool students about farming. (the Ag in the Classroom stuff is GREAT!! and, it's free to public school teachers, but I'm SURE if homeschool moms explain their unit study and intentions, Farm Bureau will be more than happy to send you some stuff for your older children) The www.agintheclass.org website should lead to even more teaching ideas.
Also, your can contact SUDIA (they so the GOT MILK? campaign) that's the Southeast United Dairy Industry Association, Inc. at 1-800-928-6455 and explain that you are a homeschool mom who would like to know if SUDIA has any free materials that might help in educating your child about the world of farming, dairying in particular (they do have stuff). SUDIA should say yes and they'll send you a very nice, very detailed "Milk From Cow to You" poster (esp. if you offer to pass the poster around to your friends who homeschool so they can educate their children about dairying), and they'll probably send you some other goodies, too.
Milk Mustache recipe: 2 cups milk, 1 cup ice cream, 4 tbsp-1 pkg. instant vanilla pudding. Blend and drink!
More Farm Literature Courtesy of Farm Bureau:
Corn is Maize by Aliki
Cow by Jules Older
Farming by Gail Gibbons
Food and Eating Long Ago (an Usborne Explainers Book)
The Grapes Grow Sweet by Lynne Tuft
How a Seed Grows by Helen J. Jordan
Ice Cream by Jules Older
Oh Say Can You Seed? by Bonnie Worth
One Bean by Anne Rockwell
Pancakes! Pancakes! by Eric Carle
Popcorn! by Elaine Landau
Pumpkin Circle:The Stroy of A Garden by George Levinson
Science in Colonial America by Brendan January
Science in Early America by Geraldine Woods
www.kinderkorner.com/farm.html has a really nice farm unit with many of the picture books listed above and great activities, poems, etc. I know there's even a John Deere unit around here somewhere (just for kids) but I can't find it right now...I'll keep looking.
Hope all this doesn't create information overload for you! Good luck from the unofficial farm-field-trip-lady around here!! Happy Planning!
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Kristine
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Angel
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Wow! Thank you, Tracy and Kristine!
--Angela
Mom to 3+2
Three Plus Two
Wild Things
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Kelly
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A resounding thank you to you all for your endorsement of "American Farmer". My own farmer boys (and girls) are just LOVING this game. The only problem is that now it's hard to get them away from cyberfarming and out to work on our real farm!  Seriously, though, it's a great little game.
Kelly down on the farm in FL
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ami*
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Angela,
Here are some unit studies on farming from Homeschool Share that have already been put together for picture books. Some of the units are less farmish than others, but they all either mention farming or you could use as a springboard for a discussion on farm life.
Hope you find something you can use! :)
All the Places to Love (Tracy already mentioned and linked)
A Cow, A Bee, A Cookie and Me
Busy Monday Morning
The Ox-Cart Man
Petunia
Just Like Mama
Raising Yoder's Barn
What a Wonderful Day to Be A Cow
Hope that helps you out a little! 
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Angel
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Oh, Raising Yoder's Barn! I read that to my older kids when they were little; I'd forgotten about that one.
I think we will be busy until the seed catalogs come, at least. 
--Angela
Mom to 3+2
Three Plus Two
Wild Things
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4Real Forums : Exploring God's Creation in Nature and Science
Topic: A unit on Farming
