Shearing a sheep

How To Shear a Sheep

In talking with Landon about the different farm animals and how we use products from each of the different ones we moved the discussion on to sheep. We talked about how clothes are made – how material is made – and that some material comes from sheep. He looked at me kind of funny at this point. We talked about how they cut the hair from a sheep and turn it into yarn.

A great way to illustrate this is to take some cotton balls and twist it repeatedly. They will get to see how the “fluffy” from a sheep turns into yarn.

Then I talked about how they get the wool off of the sheep and that it’s called shearing. I cut Brad’s hair, so he’s seen me use the clippers on him and watch the hair fall off of his head and I cut it, but to give the full experience (without giving a 3 year old a razor and a full grown sheep), Landon shaved a balloon with a Popsicle stick!

Blow up a balloon and draw a sheepy face. Add shaving cream and shave!

Shearing a sheep

Comments

5 responses to “How To Shear a Sheep”

  1. Love this activity! I made some suggestions for how it could be used for speech therapy on my facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TheSpeakBoutique

  2. Thanks for the great idea! We sheared our “sheep” last week and had a blast! Of course, then my toddler had lots of fun spreading the sheep “fur” all over herself and running around saying “baaaaaa”. Too funny!

    1. I’m glad you had fun with it! Running around with sheep “fur” is probably the best part!

  3. I was searching on pinterest for ideas and came across your blog! I really love this idea of shearing a sheep; thanks for sharing. I just might have my little preschoolers try this 🙂

    Preschool For Rookies

  4. I plan to use this in First Day School tomorrow. We are using the story “The Adventures of Obadiah” by Brinton Turkle. Obadiah goes to a sheep shearing and has a lot of adventures but no one believes him since he’s been telling wild stories. The suggested activity is gluing cotton balls on a sheep picture. But this idea??? GENIUS!!