Looking for a fun barn craft to go with your favorite preschool book or farm theme? Get ready for an exciting and educational craft that your little ones will absolutely love. Inspired by the timeless children’s book “Big Red Barn,” we have a fantastic barn craft that not only brings the story to life but also helps develop those all-important fine motor skills. It’s the perfect activity to build precision and coordination skills while gaining the dramatic play benefits of puppets.
So gather your materials and prepare for a barn-building adventure that will have preschoolers buzzing with joy and learning. Let’s dive into this Big Red Barn activity create something wonderful together!
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Barn Craft
This month for our Book Club Play Date series we’re sharing a craft based on the book, Big Red Barn. What a fun book for preschool aged children! (And, don’t tell, but my older kids really got into this book, too!) We made pretend play Farm Animals Puppets and a barn craft puppet show stage, perfect for farm pretend play. This fun craft goes perfectly with a fun farm animal book!
Plus, my kids loved repurposing this barn craft to use with our fingerprint farm animals.
This post contains Amazon affiliate links.
Big Red Barn (affiliate link) by Margaret Wise Brown is a quiet and calming book with it’s tone and rhythmic text.
The Farm is full of life and this book is all about the animals. We see how the animals play and explore while the children are away. The detailed illustrations are creative and my kids loved looking for the tiny mice or butterfly on the pages of the book.
This was a new book to us, but it quickly became a hit in our house. Margaret Wise Brown also authored Goodnight Moon (affiliate link) (one of our favorites! Remember our Goodnight Moon Goodnight Moon Memory Game?) It was fun to talk about the author and recall parts of Goodnight Moon that appear in this book–the barn in the picture, the mouse, and the moon.
We wondered if the Big Red Barn from our story was the same as the barn in the picture in Goodnight Moon. We love coming up with extension activities based on children’s books (more than a little bit!) and this book and activity rose to the top of our favorites!
Big Red Barn craft
You’ll need a few materials for your barn craft and puppets. Affiliate links included below:
- Colored Craft Sticks
- Glue
- Printer Paper
- Our Free Barn Animals Puppets Coloring Sheet (Get them below.)
- Crayons
- Scissors (This) is my favorite brand for kids!)
- Clear Tape
- Red cardstock
How to Make a Popsicle Stick Barn
This barn craft is perfect for preschoolers. It’s not complex, and the 2D barn is perfect for encouraging bilateral coordination skills and crossing midline while using the printable farm animal puppets.
First, we made the barn craft:
- Arrange the red craft sticks (affiliate link) like we did in the picture above.
- Use glue to stick the top and bottom sticks on top of the vertical sticks. I made a barn as my preschooler copied the steps beside me. This was a good way to practice direction following with visual cues. I was sure to craft my barn slowly so she could follow along with hers.
- Count out the Popsicle sticks as you go. We used 12 red sticks all together. You’ll want to make your barn on a piece of paper or waxed paper for easy transporting as it dries.
4. Then we used a piece of Red cardstock(affiliate link) to make the barn roof. Simply cut the roof into an angled shape. I had the roofs already cut out and showed my daughter how to glue it onto the back of the Popsicle stick barn.
5. You’ll need to let the barn dry for a few hours or overnight. Just let it rest right on the paper.
6. Next, color in our Barn Animal Coloring Sheet. You can get the free printable below.
7. Cut out the animals and tape onto craft sticks
Once the barn has dried, you’ll be ready to play Barn Puppet Show with the farm animals. Act out the story in Beg Red Barn, or create your own farm animal stories. We had a lot of fun with our barn puppet animals.
Big Red Barn Activities
Looking for more Big Red Barn activities? Use some of our farm ideas:
- Farm scissor skills worksheets
- Scarecrow craft
- Sheep craft
- Duckling sensory activity
- Farm sensory activity
- Farm Play Dough Sensory Bin
- Farm Brain Breaks
See what the Book Club Playdates team have created to go along with this book. With a snack, game, and sensory activity, you’ll have this book covered for your Preschool Book Club:
Farm Haystack Snack from Fun-a-Day
Farm Sensory Small World from Still Playing School
Farm Animals Ring Toss Game from Craftulate
More activities based on books that you will love (Because we sure did!):
Love exploring books with hands-on play?
Free Barn Animal Puppets
Use these barn animal puppets along with your barn craft. This resource is also found inside our Member’s Club, under the Farm Therapy Theme. Members can log in and access the resource on our Farm Therapy Theme page (Level 2 Members) or on our Fine Motor Freebie Downloads along with all of our free downloads (Level 1 and Level 2 members).
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
Print off all of the Farm themed resources inside the Farm Therapy Kit, which contains 93 pages of farm activities to target fine motor, gross motor, visual motor, self-regulation, scissor skills, handwriting, and more!
3 thoughts on “Big Red Barn Craft”
The barn is my favorite! Just perfect for retelling the story (and making up some new ones too!)
Adorable!!!
Thanks Emma! We are really having fun with these puppets!
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