Communication and Language Personal, Social and Emotional Development Physical Development

 Play a listening game with the children. Sit children in a circle
and choose one child to be the farmer asleep in the middle.
Once he is asleep, choose one child to be the ‘sheep’. They
must creep up to the farmer to take his chocolates. If the
farmer hears them, they can point in the direction of the
sound. If they guess correctly, they stay as the farmer and
another sheep is chosen.
 Using a duck mask, take it in turns to become the duck from
the story. Invite children to ask the duck questions to find out
more about their character.
 Find out more about the farm animals featured in the story by
using non-fiction books. Introduce some new vocabulary,
such as ‘flock’, ‘cattle’ and ‘herd’.
 Sit children in a circle and place some small world farm
animals (such as a cow, pig and sheep) on the floor. Play a
game where one child secretly chooses an animal and then
describes it for others to guess the mystery animal.
 Encourage children to consider what it must have been like for
the duck to live with a very lazy farmer. Explore what being lazy
means. What does being lazy look like? How could we
encourage the farmer to stop being lazy?
 Can the children work collaboratively to build a tractor to help
the animals using large construction materials?
 How goes the work? Set the children a challenge to work
together to complete some of the challenges the Duck
completed, such as washing or weeding.
 Explore the theme of teamwork and how the animals worked
together to look after the farm. Create a list of ways the
children can work together to look after their classroom.
Children could take on specific responsibilities to work as a
community of friends.
 Invite children to design a daily routine for the farmer to ensure
he looks after himself, including eating less chocolate and
having more exercise.
 Challenge the children to clean small world farm animals. Provide
them with a range of cleaning equipment (such as a paintbrush,
toothbrush, shower puff and cloth). Children can investigate
which piece of equipment is the most effective.
 Encourage children to develop their gross motor skills by carrying
out farm chores. For example, mopping the barns, brushing up
the straw and digging up vegetables.
 Draw paths of animal tracks in chalk for children to follow and
explore different ways of moving.
 Set up a throwing game in the outside area using beanbags.
Provide a wheelbarrow for children to use as a target and
practise throwing the beanbags into the wheelbarrow. Try moving
the wheelbarrow further away to provide extra challenge.
 Create an area outside where children can practise harvesting
and exploring vegetables on a farm. Provide small gardening
tools to harvest vegetables, such as carrots and parsnips, from a
soil-filled tray.

Literacy Mathematics Understanding the World Expressive Arts and Design

 Help the farmer to label the areas of the farm. Place pre-
written labels (such as ‘pond’, ‘barn’ and ‘shed’) and small
world farm resources in a large activity tray. Children can
read the labels and decide where to place them on the farm.
 Children can work together to each write a page about one of
the farm animals from the story. Place the finished
collaborative book in the reading corner for others to enjoy.
 Provide children with a selection of farm
animals and lolly sticks. Challenge the
children to create different-shaped pens
for the animals using the lolly sticks and
then sort the animals in different ways.
For example, by legs, colour or size.
 Provide children with different containers
 Explore the different areas of the farm in
the story. For example, the farmhouse,
barn, fields, meadows and chicken coop.
Children can then create their own maps
of the farm.
 Set up an area for growing ‘crops’.
Children can tend and care for their piece
 Use construction resources to create a
large-scale farm. Invite children to
consider how to keep the animals
separate from each other. Children can
then develop storylines in their play to re-
enact Farmer Duck. How will they scare
the Farmer away?

 Hide some objects from the story around the setting (such as
a duck, cow, eggs and boots). Encourage children to search
for the items and create a list of what they find.
 Invite children to write their own version of the story by
changing some elements such as the settings or the
characters.
 Encourage children to write captions or short sentences
about the story using this Farmer Duck Caption Writing
Activity.
(including milk bottles and flour bags) to
explore capacity and weight.
 Place a selection of coloured eggs in
your outside area. Children hunt for the
eggs and collect them in baskets. Using
egg boxes and number cards, can they
sort them by colour and find the
corresponding numeral?
of land, like Farmer Duck, to grow a
range of vegetables. Encourage children
to talk about what they see, hear and
feel.
 Look closely at the pages showing the
fields at the beginning and ending of the
story. Discuss how different the field
looks in winter and summer. Observe
seasonal changes over time in a local
green space.
 Using the book, children can explore how
to use musical instruments and vocal
sounds to create a sound story.
 Invite the children to work collaboratively
to create a collage of Farmer Duck for
display using a variety of techniques and
resources.
 Set up a farmyard singing area. Children
could practise and perform nursery
rhymes and songs with a farm theme.
Farmer Duck