We can help our children learn by adding play, imagination and fun to our activities. Today we’re designing super stylish watches to learn how to tell the time.
Free days of the week printable spinner
Here’s a free days of the week printable you can print and colour, plus ideas on how to use it with your children to learn the days of the week.
Free days of the week printable
Seasonal nature study calendar
This nature study calendar is a beautiful math and art project that lets you follow the changes of the year, learning about the seasons and observing the natural world.
Make a four seasons calendar
Start the year as you mean to go on and have some creative fun making a four seasons calendar. It’s a great way to try out four completely different art techniques with your children and welcome in the new year.
Sunflower Challenge 2011
Today’s the Day!
If you’ve been growing sunflowers with us as part of the Compton Hospice Sunflower Challenge you need to measure your sunflowers today. There are fabulous prizes on offer for the tallest bloom, so measure up and contact Compton with your vital statistics.
Our tallest is currently 1m 65cm. They got up to 2m 47cm last year, so there’s plenty more growing to be done. How tall are yours?
Sunflower Festival
If you’ve been enjoying growing sunflowers (whether you’re joining in the official challenge or not) and have a sunflower-themed play idea to share with us – we would love to see them. Please add a link to the Linky at the end of this post. We’ve shared some ideas for art, science and math in our Sunflower Activities ebook, and here’s one more idea for sunflower fun.
Teach children about time – make a family calendar
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?’