Weather Calendar

I have been meaning to post this for ages and keep forgetting!

We did a weather calendar as we began learning about seasons. I thought I might do a couple more through the year in order to demonstrate the differences between the seasons but next time we will do the calendar for about two weeks as that was long enough to exhaust Lamb's attention as you can see from the calendar...when the Mummy drawings start to appear again...

I printed out some summertime pictures which we cut out and glued on...well I cut and he glued then we documented the weather. This is the first time I have ever guided anything he has been drawing and noticed through doing this that suns began to appear in his drawing a lot!

Winter snowflakes

Through all of the stories and discussion about seasons over the last little while Lamb has developed a keen interest in snowflakes. It might be a little while before we can easily get to an area of snow so we made some.

First the glue

Then some wool

and some glitter

Winter snowflakes

Cherry did one too and was quite enamoured by the glitter!

Summer sun

So the idea was to paint a large sun, something easy that both children could be involved in. 

Then I thought we could dunk chickpeas into paint and stick them to the centre to create a textured effect and that was the beginning of the end.

One must strap a 17 month old child down when painting for a start and one cannot expect a three year old child to stick to the plan when the smaller person is giggling her head off while covered in paint.

The result was this...

Nothing like the sun I had envisaged. We had paint EVERYWHERE but they loved it!!!

Spring Flowers Craft

As part of our work with seasons and times I plan to do a little craft for each of the seasons. We did the autumn tree for autumn and now some flowers for spring.

We glued paper muffin liners onto our paper, put a little glue in the centre then carefully sprinkled some glitter and swizzeled it with our fingers. I drew two stems with leaves. Lamb drew one but it hasn't really come out in the photo. The little brown squiggle on one of the leaves is a caterpillar, oh and we glittered up the bee that I drew for him as well. Lamb did this completely independently once I told him what the plan was.

Autumn tree craft

What does one do when stuck at home on a rainy day with very little planned?

One uses the resources available. In this case, some coloured paper, toilet rolls and ladybird stickers!

Voila! An autumn tree...

The felt mat of the four seasons

I thought it would be a good idea to start the year off talking about times and seasons.

We borrowed a few books from the library and then while listening to a Playschool c.d that featured a song about the seasons I had an idea.

Subsequently I made a felt mat for Lamb with ties so that he can keep it all together.

With a four stage 'puzzle' with all of the pieces cut from felt and some handwritten labels of the seasons.

So we take all of the pieces off and as we are placing them back on we sing the song:

"In the summer time I like to go to the beach, go to the beach, go to the beach.

In the summer time I like to go to the beach and swim in the blue, blue sea.

In the autumn time I like to look at the trees, look at the trees, look at the trees.

In the autumn time I like to look at the trees and see all the leaves fall down.

In the winter time I like to snuggle up tight, snuggle up tight, snuggle up tight.

In the winter time I like to snuggle up tight. Snuggle up tight in bed.

In the spring time I like to sit in the sun, sit in the sun, sit in the sun.

In the spring time I like to sit in the sun and watch all the flowers grow.

All year round we like to sing our song, sing our song, sing our song.

All year round we like to sing our song, doo dee doo dee doo dee doo dee doo"

The song is "In the Summertime" and composed by Peter Combe.

It is on the "Hullabaloo" c.d but I am sure that the same thing could be done with any children's song about the seasons.

Now that I have the mat made I can make any number of activities for Lamb and Cherry related to whatever they are learning about at the time!