The Sleepy Farmer
 
 A delightful, animated story for children in the Foundation Stage.
Join in the fun as the animals try to wake the sleepy farmer from his slumbers. Watch the animation and listen to the sounds of the farmyard in this simple story designed to support the early learning Goals. See and hear all of your favourite animals... grunting pigs, bleating sheep, crowing cockerels and barking dogs. The simple story is designed help children improve their attention span, develop their listening skills and get them engaged with storybooks in a motivating, fun way. Written together with a group of children, The Sleepy Farmer's rhythmic style and simple language, with lots of repeated phrases and onomatopoeic words, will ensure your pupils have lots of fun while they are learning.  The Sleepy Farmer is a storybook – but so much more. There is an on-screen version that can be accessed in many different ways, a full colour printed book, extra activities to use on the computer, a set of worksheets and other off-computer activities along with lots of teaching tips and ideas.
The on-screen storybook ReadIt! storybooks can be used as a 'big book' on an interactive whiteboard or on networked or stand-alone computers for individual or small group work. Each story can be read at two levels… see either the full text or a simplified version, providing the support that less confident readers need to encourage them to read independently. The screens are clear and uncluttered and the language is familiar. The pages are easy and fun to navigate, with animation and full speech support. The extra support provided by the interactive features gives an added level of motivation for children to practice their reading skills. Access using switches, mouse, keyboard, touch screen or interactive whiteboard. There are options you can set to tailor the program to the learner's needs, for example you could set the background and text colour or adjust the speech output.  Additional resources A range of worksheets and educational games are included on the CD to help you provide opportunities for meaningful extension both on and away from the computer... for example learning about baby animals, matching exercises and even simple number work. The worksheets include Simple Counting, Animal Sounds, 1:1 Correspondence, Numbers, Making Sets, Flash Cards, Colouring Pages, Domino Game, Domino Game 2, Matching Game, Writing Numbers, Sound Lotto Boards, Baby Animals Flashcards, Sequencing Cards and Learn to Write Numbers.
  
The additional activities on the CD can be used with IntelliKeys, mouse, touch monitor or interactive whiteboard. They include:  Sound Lotto Game
Use this program together with the printable boards and tokens to play a sound lotto game. Choose to match full colour, line drawings or silhouettes. Make your own farm pictures
Choose a background and add farm animals by clicking with the mouse or touching IntelliKeys or a touch monitor. Add as many animals as you like, dragging and dropping them around the screen to make your own farmyard picture. Animal Sounds
Use this program to listen to the sounds made by the animals in the story. Complete with activity overlay. Animal Sounds Part 2
Similar to Animal Sounds Part One but this version includes the names of the animals. Complete with activity overlay. Animal Sounds Part 3
A more difficult version of the Animal Sounds activity. This version uses animal names alone. Complete with activity overlay. ReadIt! The Sleepy Farmer was developed by Ian Bean, winner of a Becta ICT in Practice Award for Inclusion. See other software from our ReadIt! Series Read the Guardian's review | 
