It’s county fair week! As I’ve mentioned, AG has been smitten with the idea of the fair because of her favorite children’s documentary about a sheep farm, Sheep Crossing. Knowing that the fair was coming up we built in some learning fun.

Starting out at the public library, as always, I found out that there aren’t really that many picture books with fair themes, at least in our district. The librarians did dig up a couple of good ones for us:

County Fair (adapted from Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder) is a wonderfully illustrated story about Almanzo’s trip to the county fair with his family. Almanzo is thrilled that his pumpkin wins a blue ribbon, which got us into discussing the competitions at the fair and what the different ribbons mean.

Country Fair by Gail Gibbons had a lot of content about the variety of activities at a fair. This book is very fact-oriented without much of a story, and the illustrations weren’t my favorite. But, it added in some more “modern” elements of a fair than the little house book had, such as fireworks, a demolition derby, and a tractor pull.

A Week at the Fair by Patricia Harrison Easton is a longer story – really too long for us (it feels like it takes a week to read…), although AG likes it and has requested it several times. This is a more detailed account with real photographs and text from a girl who is taking animals to show at the fair. It goes into detail about how they prepare for the fair, how the animals are shown in different classes, how they are judged for the quality of the animal and showmanship, etc. This book was a great introduction to why the animals are at the fair and what all the kids are doing with them.

At the Educational Resource Center I used the Ellison machines to cut out some fair-related shapes – blue and red ribbons, tickets, tractor, “treats”, pig, sheep, cheese, milk, cow, apple, rabbit, basket, pumpkin, vegetables, and chicken. I wrote the words on lined word strips, put all the shapes into our pocket chart, and told AG it was a game to see if she could match the word with the shape (everything is fun if you call it a game, right?!).

She really reads pretty well for a 3 year old, but I have noticed that she tends to guess at the words based on pictures. This was a great game for reading practice to sound out the word first and then find the picture that matched.

Today we spent the morning at the county fair, much to her delight! We spent all of our time in the animal buildings and the art hall. It was fun to have the kids see all the different breeds of chickens, bunnies, cows, and sheep – our “city kids” don’t often stand face-to-face with a huge turkey or see that rabbits come in all shapes and sizes! When we were walking through the animal buildings, NP pointed at the rabbit building and asked AG what was in there. She looked at the word at the top of the building for a few seconds and then exclaimed, “rabbits!” It is so fun to see her catching on to reading!!

LB was very impressed with the sheep – remember how they both love the Sheep Crossing documentary? When we first went into the sheep building he just stared and them and then signed puppy and barked! As soon as we told him they were sheep, he was kicking and squealing and “baa-ing” at them like crazy. Good times. I’m sure the sheep were happy that we showed up first thing in the morning to liven up the place!

AG really enjoyed watching some of the calves and lambs be shown- we were able to reference back to the A Week at the Fair book about what the judges were looking for, how the kids were supposed to keep their animals under control, etc.

This afternoon after LB laid down for his nap, AG and I worked on making some “quilts” out of paper (art and geometry!) – I’ll tell you more about these on Free Fun Friday (click here to read about them). :)

While we were making these AG said, “it’s kinda like our house is the fair. A quiet fair – with only a kitty and a fish.” She doesn’t like loud noises – our pretend fair is probably more her speed!!

This might not have been the best way to spend our day, as the kids and I all have bad colds. We laid low yesterday… but the fair comes our way but once a year, and the free days must be taken advantage of! Everyone is a little tired and crabby this afternoon, but it was worth it. :)

Is there a fair near you this fall? Have any fair-related learning ideas to share?

The book titles and images above are linked to amazon.com for your convenience.  I am an amazon associate and would receive a small percentage of any sales resulting from these links.