Are you ready for a challenge? What’s your very best blog post from the past year? Yes, just one post – can you pick one?
Best of 2011 Blog Hop
For me, I knew it was going to have to be [Read more…]
Thank you card calendars
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
New Year crafts and activities
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.
We think this family calendar is a very effective pictorial way to help children understand the new year and how time works.
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!
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?’
Make a Wish Tree
I have the absolute pleasure of being a guest poster over at notimeforflashcards with my ‘Make a Wish Tree‘ craft.
Please pop over to have a look.
If you don’t know notimeforflashcards already you’re in for a treat as it’s packed full of great ideas to nurture your child.
Child-friendly New Year’s resolutions
Quick resource >> Download your ready-made New Year Unit
For a few years now I’ve been encouraging the children to make their own New Year’s Resolutions. I think it’s good for them to have goals they set themselves or plans for things they’d like to do.
In previous years we’ve simply made a list of their resolutions but this year we’re using a flower design.
We always start by looking over the resolutions from the past and the children are interested to see how they have developed over the years and how their achievements have changed.
The girl who once planned to learn how to hop has now progressed to riding her bike without stabilisers.
For this year’s resolutions we started by drawing a flower outline on a paper plate.
Then we cut it out.
I’ve used a flower design with five petals as I wanted the children to think about themselves as a person with several different aspects.
They might be a daughter, sister, school child, friend and member of a community – all at the same time.
We talked about these different parts of their life and with my 6 year old we used these words as the focus of a resolution for each petal:
:: what is she going to resolve to do as a sister in 2010?
:: what as a school child? and so on.
My 3 year old found this harder so for her we talked about what she’d like to be doing, trying, learning, how she could be helping and where she’d like to be going.
We glued a picture of each child in the centre of the flower, wrote one resolution in each petal and then added some colour.
We’ve hung them up in their bedrooms so they can keep them in mind through the year.
We’re having a bedtime feast tonight to welcome in the new year and are excited about the things we have planned for 2010.
Download your ready-made New Year thematic unit
Download your ready-made New Year thematic unit from the Play Academy and you’ll have everything you need to guide your children through a fun and thoughtful new year.
In this New Year Unit your children can:
:: learn about New Year celebrations and enjoy new year fizz sensory play
:: make a homemade calendar
:: complete their unique What A Year! journal page
:: make noise makers and fireworks
:: set New Year’s resolution goals
:: make a wishing wand or make a poster of their Word of the Year
Bonus New Year thematic unit printables
The Play Academy’s thematic units come with practical printables that make the lessons more engaging for your children and easier for you to teach.
No need to go searching for printables to accompany your lessons, they’re all included when you download your chosen unit.
In this New Year Unit you’ll receive these bonus printables:
:: a Draw Your Own Calendar
:: a What A Year! New Year Review poster / journal page
:: a New Year Colouring page
:: and New Year Goals printables
How to download your ready-made New Year Unit
You can download your ready-made New Year unit, along with over 50 more, from NurtureStore’s Play Academy.
If you are already of the Play Academy, you can download this unit straight away from our Library here.
If you are not yet a member, find out more and choose your first unit here. Your teaching is about to get a whole lot easier!
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