I Am Thankful for Food and Clothing (from Plants and Animals)

Clothespin-Legged Farm Animals and File Folder Barn

Materials Used:

• wooden clothespins
• printable farm animal template
• file folder
• printable barn with barn door line drawing
• scissors
• glue

For our Active Faith to accompany our Primary lesson, I Am Thankful for Food and Clothing, as taught to 3-4 year olds, I searched for and thought about crafts involving seeds or plants or animals, as a large portion of the lesson makes the point that plants and animals provide the food and clothing that we enjoy.  I realized that a person can find both plants and animals in a farm setting, so that is where I turned my focus.  I came across a picture and post of clothespin-legged farm animals here, and that was the starting point.  That post links to the template to print the farm animals.  Be advised: I created the full set of four farm animals for each of the six children in our Primary class; because the animals have a front and back side, that was 48 animals that I cut out.  It took me about two hours.  If I had it to do over again, I might have done something more like this, although there was no template that came with that idea.

Now the animals need a barn.  I thought back to our chapel made from a file folder, and realized I can make a barn using the same idea.  I found a simplified barn with barn door line drawing.  I stapled that print out to the file folder, and then cut along two side of the barn door so it can open.

Granted, the barn and animals are not to scale, and the animals are a bit anthropomorphic, but the children really enjoyed coloring and assembling the animals.

Oh, and our snack included cheese (from an animal), apple (from a plant, with seeds) and Goldfish Grahams (because they're yummy - I mean, because they are in the shape of a fish).

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