A farming we will go

I've come up with a different theme for each week basically to make it easier for me to come up with art projects, stories to read, activities, etc.  So this first week the theme is "Farms".  So the best way to kick off the week?  Head to a farm!  We headed out to a farm in north Durham on Saturday for a one hour tour.  Probably wasn't worth the 45 minute trip to get there, but hopefully the kids learned something about life on a farm.  When we first arrived (we were early), they were in process of artificially inseminating 3 cows.  Not exactly what I wanted to get out of the farm experience, but I guess even Braden and I saw something we'd never seen.

During the tour, the kids got to run around with goats and sheep, chickens, puppies, and kittens.  We also saw a mommy emu, a daddy, and 3 baby emus.  The emus didn't want to be touched though.  We pet some sweet horses and found the herd of cows.  Had to do a special call to get them to come into the field with us.  Goes a little something like this...."Here cows! (clap, clap, clap)".  Seriously.  And actually it works.  Who'd a thought.

Ethan got to hold a chicken, so that was cool.

Brynn likes petting the sheep.  This particular guy loved being pet and will actually knock you down if you don't pet him when he wants to be pet.

They also got to hold some eggs that had just been laid.

We continued the farm theme all the way through the weekend with a trip to the "Got to be NC" festival at the fairgrounds.  Okay, so maybe we spent most of the time riding rides and eating snowcones, but there were lots of tractors there, a really loud tractor pull contest going on, and we did go through the petting zoo area, so it counts, right?  Here's Blythe and Doug about to tackle the free-fall ride.  

Good weekend prep for (hopefully) a good farm-themed week.