Seasons of the Year, Part 2

Today we expanded our seasons lesson from yesterday.  We used the seasons wheel we made yesterday, and we drew on it things we do in each of the seasons.  Swimming in summer, playing with leaves in fall, ice skating in winter, and flowers in spring.  

I got an ice cube tray out of the freezer, and we skated on the cold ice with our finger nails, like we skate in the winter.  Then we put an ice cube in a mug and heated it up in the microwave (she initiated counting while we waited, and so we counted the seconds to 35, although she can only make it to around 29 at this point) - it melted into water!  The water was warm, like you would want to swim in in the summer.  My daughter wanted more, and so we ended up melting all the ice cubes in the microwave.  The we put more water into the tray, put the tray back in the freezer, and later today we're going to see what happened to the water in the freezer. 

For autumn, we cut out five simple red construction paper leaves.  We took turns being the "tree."  Our arms were the branches, and we held the leaves in them, then we let them fall to the floor singing a song we learned in music class ("Leaves are falling, softly floating, tumbling to the ground....").  We ended up letting all our stuffed animals and dolls have a turn being the tree, too. 

Seasons of the Year

Today we focused on the seasons of the year.  We cut a piece of paper into a circle and folded it into 4 parts.  We counted 1-2-3-4.  Then on the four sections, I wrote "winter," "spring," "summer," and "fall" respectively.  We drew and colored pictures of what trees look like in each of the seasons in their sections - in winter no leaves, in spring green leaves with flowers, in summer green leaves under a hot sun, in fall colored leaves falling to the ground.  I taught her the ASL sign for "fall" ( couldn't remember the signs for the other seasons right off the top of my head, or I would have done that, too).  I drew arrows between the sections and talked about how they go from one to the other.  Then we went round and round the circle, signing "cold" for winter, "warm" for spring, "hot" for summer, and "cool" for fall.  When we were done, I asked her if she wanted to go outside and see the leaves falling to the ground - of course, she did.  So we went outside (we took our dog with us) and ran around the yard, kicking the leaves and playing chase with our dog.  I was going to rake them, but they were so beautiful as they were I couldn't bring myself to do it...

Apples

We did this over the course of a couple of days, not in the order delineated below.  We started with the construction paper.  In any case, here were our apple activities:  

I took a knife and cut an apple.  We looked at and learned the names of the core, the seeds, the stem, the skin, and the yummy part (I couldn't think of its name).  Some parts we eat (and we did eat), some parts we don't.  

We played with the seeds while we ate the apple - we counted them and arranged them in different shapes.  And we sang the song "Ohhhhhhhhhh the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need - the sun and the rain and the apple seed.  The Lord is good to me...."

I took red construction paper and cut out some circles to make paper apples.  We made a construction-paper apple tree with brown and green paper, and she taped the pieces (with some help) to another sheet of paper, and then we put on the red apples.  We counted them, and we talked about picking apples from trees in the fall.  Because they were taped to the picture and not glued or anything permanent, we could take them off and put them back on the paper easily, so we could "pick" the apples from the tree, or they could "faaaaaallllllll down."

We taped the real apple seeds to the construction-paper apples on our construction-paper tree.  We made other similar-sized red circles from the construction paper and then taped those circles on top of the ones with the seeds on them, making 3D apples.  So the seeds were hidden, just like in real apples.   

Using the construction paper, I cut out a little red capitol 'A' and a lower case 'a'.  What letter is this?, I asked, and she said, "A!"  What does it say?  She identified the sound, and we connected the sound with the word "apple."  Then we taped the a's on the picture.  It's always good to review that stuff.

Somewhere in there I told her the story of Johnny Appleseed.

Then we finished and ate some more apples for snack time.

Pumpkins

We did this last month, too.  We cut out a big construction-paper orange pumpkin.  We used other pieces of construction paper to give the pumpkin different shaped eyes, noses, and mouths.  We used tape so the pieces could easily be removed and replaced and put back on later.  We made happy faces and sad faces.  We taped on different combinations of mouths and eyes and noses to see what it looked like.  She loved it.  She especially loved changing the emotions of the face.  It was interesting for me to notice that when the pumpkin felt certain emotions - like, when it was sad - she wanted to put it in time-out.  It became quite a game for her.  The connections she made between emotions and 'time-out' were interesting to note.  

We also cut out a "p" for pumpkin and reviewed its sound.

Magnets

Today we discovered the wonderful world of magnets.  Of course my daughter has encountered magnets before on the refrigerator, but we focused on them today.  We have a little magnet stick, and we tried out different things - blocks, our tummies, scissors, etc. - to see what would stick and what wouldn't.  "That's a magnet!" we would say when we found something that stuck, and "That's not a magnet!" when it didn't stick.  We made up a little song about magnets, which she loved.  We saw that some magnets stick with other magnets, some repel each other, some are strong and some are weak, etc.  She had a lot of fun just playing by herself with the magnets after awhile, too.

The Dropping Game

So when you drop things in a vacuum, everything falls at the same rate.  Since no one actually lives in a vacuum, though, I thought it might be fun to let my daughter experiment with dropping things and seeing what falls fastest.  We have some stairs with a railing, and we went part of the way up with 2 items at a time - like, a book and a wadded up piece of paper; a wadded up piece of paper and a flat sheet of paper; 2 balloons of different sizes; etc.  We asked, "Which will fall faster?" and then we'd drop them and see.  By the end, she was able to predict that smaller balloons fall faster than bigger balloons, which I thought was actually quite impressive.     

More Water Fun

We took a small bowl of water and some paper.  We tore the paper and listened to the sound -" "rrrrrip."  Then we soaked the paper in the water, and ripped it again - no sound!  Oh, she loved it.  We "took the sound away" for days.

Then we put a washcloth into the bowl, and when we picked it up the water was all gone!  We rung out as much as we could and did it again.  And we talked about how this is why we dry ourselves off with a towel after bath time - the towels take away the water.

Sea Shells

This past weekend my husband, daughter, and I were at the ocean as leaders for a youth retreat.  On Saturday morning I took a break and went for a prayer walk along the beach.  There was almost no one around, and the ocean was so beautiful.  I looked down and suddenly noticed that there were all these beautiful shells!  Not, like, super fabulous big shells, but there was quite a variety in terms of size and shape and color, and so I gathered a number of them to show to my daughter.  Today we played with them.  She broke some of the neater ones, but that's okay.  I'd rather them be used and broken than sit uselessly as clutter in some box.  We put them in and out of the sand bucket.  I started a game where we scooped the smaller shells with the bigger shells to put them in the bucket.  She liked the game, but she liked it best when I was the one scooping the shells, which wasn't exactly what I was going for.  We sorted them according to their similarities.  We looked at their colors, we felt their smooth texture against our fingers and cheeks (she thought the cheek thing felt a little weird), and I made up a song that she loved (to the tune of 'I'm a Little Tea Pot'):

I'm a little sea shell, I come from the sea.

Little fishies swim there and they live inside of me.

When the water rises I go high on the sand.

The water goes back in the sea, and I am left on land.

We just basically handled the shells and put them in and out of the bucket, singing the song, for quite some time.  It became today's favorite game.

Playing with Dirt

Yesterday we took outside into the front yard my daughter's sand shovel, pick, and bucket, along with a booster seat tray, some water in another bucket, a towel, and a cleaning sponge.  We dug up some dirt with the pick and shovel, and we dumped the dirt into the bucket.  When we had enough dirt, we poured the dirt from the bucket onto the tray and examined what we saw:  ants, rocks, dirt, etc.  When we were done, we poured some water onto the tray and I let her use the sponge to wipe it clean (she tried really hard, and she almost did it completely).  Then I finished the cleaning and we wiped it with a towel.  Then we repeated the process.  Throughout the activity, we also saw two beautiful butterflies, looked amazed at some leaves, and saw some other insects, as well.

My goals in doing this with her were (1) to give her a chance to observe, feel, and interact with real dirt (not just sand in a sandbox), (2) to give her a chance to practice her cleaning skills - there is something satisfying about actually seeing a surface change colors from dirty to clean when you wipe it, and wiping dirt definitely has that effect, (3) develop her pouring and scooping coordination (she's really into that right now - that is why I had her both scoop the dirt into the bucket and then pour the dirt from the bucket onto the tray) and (4) to grow in her understanding of the goodness of this world God has made.

"I'm Gonna Thank the Lord" Song

On our walk today, as we came across flowers and trees and grass and roots and dirt, I sang (to the tune of "I'm Gonna Sing when the Spirit says Sing..."):

I'm gonna thank the Lord for the _Tulips_

I'm gonna thank the Lord for the _Tulips_

I'm gonna thank the Lord for the _Tulips_

And praise Him everyday! 

We replaced "Tulips" with the other things we saw as we saw them.  She loved the song, and it helped her learn to notice, care about, and identify the various parts of nature that we encountered along the way.

Flowers, Trees, and Animals: Learning to Love Nature

Two questions I always am asking myself is, "What are the core things I want my daughter to grow up knowing?" and "What is she experiencing in her life right now to learn those things?"  One of my answers is that I want her to appreciate and care tenderly for this magnificent planet God has created.  And so I try to do nature activities with her frequently.  We've slacked on these the past week or so, and so today we did some catch-up.  Here were our nature activities:

1.  Throughout the Spring we have been going on daily walks/stroller rides.  I've been stopping whenever I see flowers in bloom, and I enthusiastically name them and point to them.  Today, however, we stopped to look at different kinds of leaves.  We saw long, skinny pine tree leaves, flat and broad leaves, big leaves, small leaves, jagged-edge leaves, smooth-edge leaves, etc., etc.  When they were close to the road, I'd let her touch them for a little while to feel as well as see the differences between the leaves.  This was also good for reinforcing opposite concepts (like, showing her two very different leaves and naming them "BIG/little" "jagged/smooth" etc.)

2.  I picked a dandelion and brought it home with us.  When we got home, I took a white sheet of computer paper and put the dandelion on top of it.  I rubbed the flower bud into the paper, and showed her that it made a yellow spot.  Then I pointed out to her the petals, the leaves, and the stem.  Then we took the different parts of the dandelion (all the petals, the leaves, and the stem) apart, looking carefully at each part.  We put the little petals on one part of the paper, the leaves on another part of the paper, and the stem on another (this was good for teaching the sorting concept, as well).  We pulled the stem apart to look inside.  It was very interesting exploration.  I kept reinforcing that this is beautiful and good.

3.  We went to the local nature conservation area.  My daughter chased geese, and she even came across a little family with 6 baby geese!  The mommy goose was not so happy as she kept chasing the little babies, and so I had to put an end to that (with some loud protests), but I am glad she got to see and interact with the geese.  We also saw ducks, a peacock, a turtle, fish, and a rabbit.  The conservation center had some inside rooms with interactive animal books, a bald-eagle puzzle, a life-size bear head, a life-size wooden alligator, lots of types of eggs (behind glass), and some really fun chairs to climb, objects to open and close, and colors to identify.  Check out the types of places like this that your tax dollars are paying for in your area!

4.  There was a pond at the nature conservation center, and we sat down beside it.  She wanted to throw things into it.  I made it into a game.  I'd give her something to throw in, she'd throw it, and we'd see if it sinks or floats.  It was really interesting to me that everything connected with life in some way floated (e.g., leaves, sticks, petals,), but those things not connected with living things all sunk (e.g., rocks).  I wonder if that's always the case?

5.  We spent some time in our yard with our flowers and shrubs.  I excitedly showed her the insects.  Some crawl on the ground, some fly in the air, look - that one went under a rock!, etc.   She very sweetly leaned down to pretend to kiss an insect a few times.  Very sweet.  I'm not a fan of bugs in general, and I figure she'll readily pick that up as she grows.  But I also want her to grow up knowing that we couldn't live without them, and, more importantly, that God made them and called them good.  So they are worthy of our appreciation, even if sometimes they bother us.