Circle of time - part 2

This week is all about Months and Seasons of the Year. We remember already what month we have now (children always shout JANUARY TWO THOUSAND AND TWELVE!), so all we had to do was to learn all the other months :) To do it - we used a very calm but catchy song:



"January, February, March and April, May, June, July and August, September, October, November, December, These are the months of the year."

After two days we started to sing it without video, a bit faster and just once or twice, so children don't have time to get bored with it.

We have small cards with the names of the months in four different colors (we repeat basic colors), which symbolize 4 seasons of the year: blue - Winter, green - Spring, yellow - Summer and red - Autumn (Fall). We also put on the board symbols for those seasons: snowflake, flower, sun and a red leaf. How we learn the names? Try this song:



"Four seasons in a year, I can name all four, do you wanna' hear, let's get ready and say them all: WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER AND FALL"

Children sing the chorus and listen (and watch) to the rapped stanzas - they can see and hear what we can do in all 4 seasons. By the way: I always tell them that Jesen has two names: Autumn and Fall, so they understand and are able to use them both.

Apart from that we saw some pictures showing 4 seasons - children had to recognize the characteristic nature changes and peoples actions on the pictures. The easiest way to see the changes in nature is to observe the trees. We watched this animation:



and we described the trees on the pictures of seasons. This was also topic of our artwork this week: How do trees look in different seasons? We drew our hands and arms on the grey paper and cut them off, glued it to the white paper and painted with our fingers (the most important was the interpretation of the topic, not the accordance to the reality). Cutting is still very hard for us, but we practise a lot.

We also have a tree in our classroom, made of branches found outside on our playground. Now there is some crepe paper snow on it and we will talk about how it will change during the year.

The other way we understand how the year divides to months and seasons is the story about 12 Months (the one with Maruska and Holena). First time I told the story with my own words, using also pictures of violets, strawberries and apples. Then we will practise remembering it through acting it out - we will have a little theatre :) I found only English version in the internet (much longer and more difficult than the one I told your children), but I am sure you know it in Slovak or you already have it in your kid's library.

http://oaks.nvg.org/czech15.html

Thanks to this story we practise the names of the months and we get to know new symbols of seasons: violets - Spring, strawberries - Summer and apples - Autumn (Fall).