Here’s a farm animals free printable for toddlers and preschoolers. This farm animals printable is perfect for playing a guessing peek-a-book game or using while you sing Old MacDonald Had a Farm!
Follow Buggy and Buddy on Pinterest!
Does your toddler or preschooler love farm animals like mine? Theo is just enthralled with sheep, cows, horses, and pigs and loves to imitate their different sounds. To build on his interest, I created a simple farm animals activity that we both can do together! (This post contains affiliate links.)
How to Set Up the Farm Animal Activity
To set up the activity, you’ll first need to print out one farmhouse (in color or in black & white) and one sheet of farm animals (in color or in black & white). Once you’ve printed out both sheets, circle cut around the farm animals. Now you’re ready!
Farm Animal Peek-A-Boo
Theo and I first took turns placing one animal inside the barn window. We’d talk about the animal and say it’s sound. After we were done exploring the animals and barn, I cut out a little peek-a-boo flap from red construction paper, placed it over the black window on the printable, and taped it down only along the bottom edge (allowing it to open and close from the top).
Theo just loved taking turns hiding the different animals behind the door! We’d take turns hiding an animal and playing peek-a-boo to discover what it was.
Using the Printable with Old MacDonald Had a Farm
It was also fun using the activity to sing Old MacDonald Had a Farm. First, one of us would hide one animal behind the door. Together we’d start singing the song, “Old MacDonald had a farm. E-I-E-I-O. And on his farm he had a _____________.” When we came to the part where you name the animal, we’d open the flap and discover which one was hidden inside and then add it to our song. We’d take turns changing the animal after each verse. So much fun!
Using the Farm Animal Printable with Older Children
Lucy (my 5 year old) and I played the game a bit differently. We would take turns hiding a farm animal behind the barn door. Then we would give each other clues using describing words to help the other person guess which animal was hiding. It was a great opportunity to introduce Lucy to adjectives through play!
Our Favorite Children’s Books about Farms and Farm Animals
Here’s a few of our absolute favorite farm-themed children’s books. These get pulled out of the bookshelves often to be read all throughout the year!
Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm
by Alice and Martin Provensen
This has to be one of our most favorite books of all time! It contains so many beautifully illustrated pages of different farm animals with fun little stories about each one. This is definitely a must-own!
The Year At Maple Hill Farm
by Alice and Martin Provensen
What a great book for observing and learning about the changing of seasons over the year on a farm! This book is one of our favorites from our Books to Read Year Round book set.
Big Red Barn
by Margaret Wise Brown
Lucy loved this board book growing up, and now it’s becoming one of Theo’s favorites as well. The rhythm of the text is very calming and soothing making it a nice book for any quiet time of day. Such a beautiful and simple story describing the day of various farm animals.
I clicked on the links for the black and white version of the “Farm Animal Peek-a-Boo” printable. There was no picture. It never showed up. Am I doing something wrong? Do I need to download something to view it?
Thank you!
I added some photo icons with the links attached. Hopefully those will work for you! 🙂
Wow, this is such a great idea! It’s in my Pinterest Board now. Can’t wait to use this when we do our Farm Theme.
Thanks so much!
Love it – adorable!
Featuring at Family Fun Friday!
http://happyandblessedhome.com/category/family-fun/
Monica
Wonderful! Looking forward to adding this to my post for Share It Saturday. Thank you
Love the Peek A Boo Farm! Thanks so much for the printables. My daughter loves singing Old McDonald. Thank you for sharing at our Pinning for Play link party!
Thanks for sharing this! We used it in our Farm themed Tot School!
I love this! Thanks so much for sharing, Stacy! (And your little guy is too cute!)
Hi, thanks for a lovely printable. My little guy just loves Old Macdonald had a farm (I had to sing it for the full 1/2 hour drive home yesterday or he started screaming at me!) – he is going to love this! I have downloaded the animals in black and white but the black and white version / thumbnail of the barn just goes to the color version. Any chance you could have a look at it – we only have a B&W printer? Thanks so much.
Hi Tory- Thanks so much for letting me know about the error. It should be fixed now! I hope your little one enjoys- I remember many days of singing Old MacDonald with my daughter (now she’s 8), and now I get to do it again with my little guy! 🙂
This just saved me in prep time for a private tutoring class! Thank you!
Great resource! I’m going to use it in my Kindergarten Spanish enrichment class.
Found this on Pinterest and combined it with another idea to stick the animals on milk bottle lids so they can be screwed onto their correct places – added a pond for the duck and some mud for the pigs. Kids love it and it helps with their fine motor skills too. Pity I can’t share a picture… Anyway, thanks for a fantastic base. Plus kids loved coloring the black and white one while I used the colored one.
I cannot print out the Barn and Animals print-out. Has something changed since this was originally posted?
Sheila
Hi Sheila- I just checked, and they worked for me. I clicked on the image of the printables under the heading “How to Set Up the Farm Animal Activity”. That took me to the printable in Google Docs where there was an option to print or download in the upper right hand corner. If that doesn’t work for you, please email me at: chelsey@buggyandbuddy.com . I’m happy to help!