4 Seasons

This post will be a little different, because it's easier to share what we did each day and how it pertained to that season, than it would be to post the different centers, like I usually do. Each day, we studied 1 of the 4 seasons. Here's what we did!

Fall

Dramatic Play: Pumpkin patch, apple tree, leaf raking


Blocks: 4 Seasons floor puzzle


Art: Fall-colored papers and fall foam stickers


Small Manipulatives: fall pattern cards


Writing: Scented twistables crayons

Large Group: we read about the 4 seasons and sang Round and Round the Seasons Go, and Leaves are Falling

Samll Group: My group played a game calling "Raking Rhymes" and practiced rhyming words, from here. The other group independently made contact paper leaf pictures.

Winter

Dramatic Play: Hot chocolate stand and snowball throwing


Blocks: ABC trains


Art: shaving cream and bears


Small Manipulatives: Snowman counting buttons, snowman building on the magnet board



Outside: It's March and snowed today, perfect for our theme! So we played in the snow and colored it with colored water squirters.

Large Group: we read A Snowy Day, then made snow pictures. We painted white with glitter on a blue paper, then added some Elmer's glue and Epsom salt on top to make it sparkly.

Small Group:
My group played snowflake racing. I had foam snowflakes spread on the ground with numbers 1-10 on them. I'd say a number, and they'd run to it.
The independent group was working on counting, and had to line up snowman cards in order 1-10, then count that many "snowballs" (cottonballs) by each one.

Spring

Dramatic Play: planting flowers in the sensory table


Blocks: ABC Easter eggs. Each eggs had the capital and lowercase letters, and had an item beginning with that letter inside.


Art: Spring sponge painting


Small Manipulatives: Spring ABC cards and flat marbles from here, Easter bunny and flowers on magnet board



Writing: Easter stickers


Large Group: we read the ABCs of Spring, then went outside searching for signs of Spring.

Small Group: we split into 3 activities, and rotated. One made popcorn blossoms for our tree, another made bird nests for our tree, and the third played a counting game by counting "eggs" into nests with numbers, from here.

Summer

Dramatic Play: a summer beach, with ocean animals and sand with shells. I think 90% of the kids played here the WHOLE time.






Blocks: ABC blocks

Art: marble painting. We've done it in trays this year, where they roll the marbles. Today, we put the papers in old oatmeal containers for them to roll and shake the marbles around. Messy and fun!


Small Manipulatives: horse clothespin matching


Large Group: we read An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell, then made lacing suns. They used a yellow paper plate with holes punched around it, and a yellow piece of yarn tied to it. They could lace around the sides, or across the middle for a cool design, or both.

As they finished their suns, they made a 4 Seasons book. They had to practice cutting a circle, then place the season picture on the right page. Then they got to draw their favorite season.

Summer

Dramatic Play
We continued our Ice Cream Shop we started last week.

 
Blocks
We had out the Duplo Legos, one of the kids' favorite toys.

Art
Day 1, I had out green paper, pencils, and scissors and asked them to make leaves for our tree. It was great cutting practice for them! They could just cut, or draw their own leaf, and a couple asked me to draw their leaf for them to cut.

Day 2, we painted with watercolors.

Small Manipulatives
We had our counting file folder games out again.
 
Counting ice cream sundaes, with a numbered cherry to add to the sundae with the matching number of candies.

Pom pom shape mats

Writing
I added the colored pens to their regular writing supplies

Outside
Another rainy week!! So we had to play inside again :(

Large Group
We read The Day Before Summer Vacation and talked about fun things they like to do in the hot summer. Then, we reviewed all the seasons. We sing them each day with our weather song, but it's good to review! We then had journal writing time for them to write some of their favorite things to do in each season.

Day 2, we read a Tree For All Seasons, and focused on the summer tree, and the green leaves they added to our tree. We then made our 4 seasons books. Each page was just a blank tree to start.
For summer, they painted green leaves.
For fall, we painted fall colored tissue paper on with starch.
For winter, we painted with "snow paint" which is glue, shaving cream, and glitter.
For spring, we glued on split peas to be leaf buds.

Small Group
We stuck to the summer ice cream theme.

My group had ice cream cones and we matched the rhymes.

Miss Kim's group had ice cream cones with capital and small letters. They put the cones in ABC order, then added the matching ice cream on top.

4 Seasons Review

This was a really fun 2 weeks, reviewing the seasons. If I can say they really learned anything all year, it's about the seasons! We talked and sang about them every day, plus already had a week in depth about each one. We took these 4 days, and each day was about 1 of the seasons. They had fun seeing old things come back too.

Fall
Dramatic play all week was camping, because it's the only way I could think to change all 4 seasons and show it each day. So we started with a tent covered in orange leaves, and other fall leaves scattered all over the ground. I didn't take pictures any of the days, but it's a repeat from our fall week here.
And if you looked there, you'll see the other fun things I brought back, like the fall pattern cards and apple tree counting cards.

Winter
The leaves were gone around the tent, and instead there were white sheets for snow, plus reindeer and polar bears. Similar to here. I also brought back the fake snow with the polar animals in it and that was the favorite for the day. Did I ever mention I found some at Dollar Tree this winter? Mine is from Steve Spangler's site, but for a small amount, the dollar store would be the way to go.

Spring
The tent was now surrounded by spring flowers. I brought out the road mat in the blocks area with the cars, and that was the hit of the day. Just starting Favorites week a little early. We also did spring sponge painting in art with flower and bug sponges. We learned about the water cycle too and watched boiling water turn to steam, and also filled cotton balls with water, then watched them "rain." We sang the water cycle song and learned the big words evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.

Summer
We totally lucked out with a hot day in the 90s this day! I planned the water party to be this day, knowing it may change with the weather, and I'm thrilled we had the only hot day of the whole month! We weren't inside long, since they were so excited to get outside. We cleaned up early, ate snack fast, then whizzed through large group to get ourselves outside and enjoying the sunshine! I had 2 small wading pools, plus the sensory table filled with water. There was a sprinkler going, plus I made some big batches of bubbles. There were fish toys and rubber ducks in the pools too. The sensory table had cups and scoops and bottles to play with. We had a great time, running around crazy from thing to thing, and I'm so glad for the warm weather!

4 Seasons book
Each day in large group we did a page in our 4 Seasons book. The words are from the song, Round and Round the Seasons Go that we sang each day (that way, they can go home and read it to their families). Here's each page:
Fall: tissue paper painted with liquid starch
 
Winter: glue and glitter for snow (could have done on darker paper, but I like them to all be the same)


 
Spring: split peas glued on like leaf buds (one girl was so precise and exact and it looks awesome)
 
 
Summer: green paint for full leaves. Their favorite one. They could not stop painting.

I always offered crayons first if they wanted to color the trees brown, or add a scene. Many added flowers in the spring and a sun for the winter and they sometimes colored their trees, but they were all more into the new thing we were going to add.

 Want to make a book for your preschoolers or kiddos? There are so many possibilities for each season, and here's your pages to download and print, easy peasy!
Click here to download.
I also printed out a cover and then stapled the books together. I bound them in Kinder because I had access to the equipment and supplies for free, and that's another great option.

Seasons

This week we are talking about the 4 seasons, more specifically, summer. We have a beach in dramatic play this week, and the kids really enjoyed playing with the fish in the pool. My little one enjoyed "swimming" with her goggles on as I got it ready. And you'll probably see a lot of her on the blog, as she's always tagging along as I get ready....and I'm not entirely comfortable posting pics of other people's children on the web. You're welcome. She's pretty spoiled to have the playroom she does.






































I love having books in dramatic play! When I was student teaching at USU, we were challenged to have a book in every self-selected play area that tied into the theme. It was AMAZING how much the kids loved to read these books as they played. It really brought literacy into our classroom, besides just having a reading center and a story with large group. This worked on Monday too! The kids saw the books and asked what they were. I said they were about oceans, since we were at the beach. They asked me to read them, and soon all the kids were sitting around me, listening to the story. Then they were off to play again. It's like a teacher's dream when something works out like that!

We also made green leaves for our tree after going outside to see what colors the leaves are in the summer. They loved painting and stamping their hands!

 The concept of seasons is difficult for preschoolers to grasp, as time isn't tangible. In fact, I've read research that shows that kids don't understand time (months, days, years, today, yesterday, etc.) until about age 7. But that doesn't mean we don't introduce the concepts and vocabulary now. While they may not grasp that a season is a period of time, they can grasp what is happening in each season, and the order they go in. This is a great time of year (mainly because I love fall!) to point out the seasons changing with your child. Talk about what they've done all summer, what it looked like outside, and what it felt like, plus what types of clothes they could wear. You can point out the leaves changing colors on the mountain now, and find other signs of fall like colder weather and pumpkins growing. Daily weather is something kids catch onto quickly! We talked about the weather on day 1 of preschool, and as we came inside on day 2 (a little early because it was raining) one of the kids pointed out we needed to change our weather sign to "rainy." We did it right away and sang our weather song. I hope you enjoy watching the seasons change. We'll wrap up tomorrow with more fun in the sun, and revisit seasons again in October as we learn about fall.