Are you making new year’s resolutions with your children? We always do and I have lists of the girls’ plans going back a few years now. It’s lovely to look back and see what they were aiming for each time – learning to swim, riding a bike without stabilisers, learning to fly (still working on that one!). This year we have some New Year fairies who are helping us with our wishes – not just plans for ourselves but also wishes we’re making for friends and family and even wishes we’re sending out into the universe for those we don’t know. Here’s how we made our New Year fairies and how our wish tree works. Read more »
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Do you send thank you cards for your Christmas presents? It’s something I encourage my two to do but I’d like them to think of it as a fun part of our traditions rather than a boring chore. We try to make sure it involves something they love doing – drawing and making – and not too much of what they’re not so keen on – sitting for too long writing out line after line of ‘thank you for..’ This year we decided to make our thank you cards in to a little gift of their own and made these: New Year Thank You Calendars. A simple design of one piece of card glued on to a larger one of a different colour, to give us our frame. A chance for the children to be creative and come up with whatever drawing they thought Grandma and Aunty Jenny would like. A little calendar, picked up for a few pence from the newsagent, glued on the bottom. A thank you message they typed on the computer, copied and printed and stuck on the reverse side. A ribbon attached on the top – and they’re done. Here are all our other New Year ideas. Happy New Year! happily shared with Kids Get Crafty and Tot Tuesday and ABCand123 Happy New Year! Are you making resolutions today? What are your hopes for 2011? I’m over at Ready for Ten this week talking about how you can encourage children to dream big and make resolutions of their own. Come on over and let us know what you think. If you have younger children you might like the New Year Resolution flowers we made last year. And looking back at our archive, 2010 was meant to be our Year of Play. I think we did OK sticking to this resolution, don’t you? I have exciting things planned for NurtureStore this year. We’ll be bringing you lots of season crafts and learning ideas, with some new things coming along too. Thank you so much for your support last year – for reading along, sharing your ideas and leaving comments. I hope you’ll follow along with us in 2011 and help us grow our community. Please join us, feel free to leave comments on posts on the blog or on or Facebook page, and come and link with our Play Academy, which will be back next week on Friday 7th January. And if you’re not already subscribed to our e-newsletter, you might like to start off your year by signing up in the box on the top right! Very best wishes for a happy, healthy and playful 2011! My 3 year old is very interested in time at the moment – what day it is, what was it yesterday and is Father Christmas coming again tonight? Young children live so much in the present that the past and the future can be difficult concepts for them to grasp. When my older daughter was 3 we made our own calendar which worked well in introducing the seasons and months to her, so today I’ve made a similar calendar with my youngest. The original calendar was linear with the months going left to right across the top – which was easier to make but I wanted to emphasize the circular nature of the seasons so this time we’ve made a round version. It’s simple in design but gives lots of opportunity for questions and learning.
You’ll need: a big piece of paper (you could always stick 4 A4 pieces together), a felt pen, a ruler, a saucer or similar to draw around, crayons in blue, green, yellow and orange, scissors, a glue stick, photos and drawings to represent family birthdays and events Start with your big piece of paper. We used white but you can be as colourful as you like.
Fold it in half And fold it in half again
Now fold this into thirds as the pictures show
Cut throught the folded paper as the picture below shows
Open out your paper to reveal 12 segments – one for each month of the year Count them out with your child
Using a ruler and felt tip draw lines along each fold. (If you wanted to you could iron the paper with a very cool iron to flatten out the creases – but we’re not perfectionists here!)
Now think about the seasons. Does your child know what they’re called? Do they know which order they go in? Which season is it now? Using a saucer draw a circle on a piece of paper and cut it out. Divide into quarters using the ruler and felt pen
Write the name of a season in each section and colour them in. We used cold blue for winter, leafy green for spring, yellow sunshine for summer and rusty orange for autumn. Stick this in the centre of your calendar.
Talk about what happens in each season. When might you build a snowman? When do all the flowers start to grow? We added some pictures to symbolise each season. Write the names of the months around the edge of the calendar, aligned with your season circle. Does your child recognise any of the letters? Do they know when their birthday is? Now you can personalise your calendar with the events that are important to your family. Stick on photos of people in their birthday month. You could add a heart for Valentine’s day, a pumpkin for Hallowe’en and Santa for Christmas. My daughter loved this bit – she’s a master with a glue stick!
When you’ve finished you can play a game, taking turns to ask questions. Who’s got a birthday in the summer? Whose birthday comes straight after Christmas? Then, stick it up and admire! You can keep refering to it everytime you celebrate one of the events on it, and everytime you child asks ‘Is it my birthday soon?’
happily shared with Joyful Learner
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