Summer
This was my very first guest post over at Childhood 101 and ever since I have written for Christie every month! We did ice play, kinetic sand, sunshine craft, and sponge water bombs. Water play is a MUST in summer time!
Autumn
Another one from Childhood 101 was this awesome collection of Autumn ideas. Kids love to collect Autumn leaves and it's fun to do some craft activities with them. How cute are those leaf people?
Winter
Winter can be a tricky one to keep the kids entertained indoors when they have so much energy and are bouncing off the walls. This indoor obstacle course is a simple one which should do the trick - and here are four more indoor activity ideas.
To follow up I did a winter craft post including some of the ideas below; snowstorm discovery bottles, winter themed playdough, snowflake cutouts, tape resist tree painting and a recipe for snow dough! Some extra images (the ice excavating and cloud in a jar experiment) in the collage below came from issue 29 of Kid Magazine.
Spring
Last year we got to try out these 'magic' beans from Live Love Bean. Not only was it exciting to watch them sprout, but to see the message revealed. Spring is a great time of year to get kids in the garden planting seeds and observing them grow.
Just the other day I shared 30 flower art and craft ideas from some brilliant kid bloggers from around the globe. How amazing does this collage look of them all put together?? Love love love...
The Four Seasons
Two perfectly paired books to tie in to a unit of work on the four seasons are The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle and Tap the Magic Tree by Christie Matheson.
The tiny seed is off on a great adventure. We learn about the changing of weather and the life cycle of a seed throughout the seasons. I absolutely adore this Spring time picture above. A painted collage is a great way for children to recreate their own giant flower which grew from that tiny seed. We also learn the life long lesson - from little things big things grow.
Do your kids know (and love) the interactive book Press Here? Well Tap the Magic Tree is really similar. Your child will tap, shake, rub, touch, jiggle, brush, knock and watch the tree change from Winter, to Spring, to Summer to Autumn.
Just to finish off, here's an example of one of my lessons I did in the classroom last year (with five year olds FYI). They each had a bare tree template, and a variety of collage and craft materials to show what the tree/sky/weather looks like in that particular season. I just adore them and think they did a fabulous job!
When teaching this unit of work, there are some key concepts that should be covered other than what the trees look like in each season (I cannot believe that the other day I actually explained to my three year old what 'evergreen' meant lol). It's important to talk about the weather in each season, what is appropriate to wear in each season, activities you can enjoy in each season, and more advanced is learning the months for each season. Obviously the weather is a fickle thing and we are experiencing cold, rainy days in Spring, or sunny days in Winter. So remind your kids that you never can tell - but it's helpful to check the weather report the day before :)
Lauren xx
No comments