Frosty Walk

We had some lovely but very cold mornings here and L has thoroughly enjoyed exploring all the frosty leaves and ice that we have found. She loves walking through the frosty grass, hearing it crunch under her feet and then looking to see the trail she had left behind. Then looking at all the leaves on the ground with lots of frost on them, she picked up one that she liked and said she was going to take it to toddlers. After a little while, I asked her what had happened to the leaf under her thumb, when she lifted it, she realised the ice had melted because her thumb was warm, she found some other leaves and tried to draw patterns on them, using the warmth of her fingers to melt the ice. Then spent time looking at the different patterns that frost made on the benches and fences etc that we walked past.

Home and time to warm and do some painting, I have been saving some cardboard for various activities, the children are really into playing with the animals and fairies and I suggested they painted a play scene for them. This went down really well and they set about painting, lots of chatter about what they wanted and they co-operated really well over what they needed and where.

Remembrance

I spent time with my own children talking about Remembrance Day and the service that we attend and why we do so. We watched CBeebies Remembrance film and then I read Where The Poppies Now Grow which is good but I always find it hard not to get emotional as I read it. So remembering those who gave their lives in the hope of a better futures, hoping and praying that one day we will have peace.

 The children made some remembrance pictures, using apple printing to create the poppies and I used the poem Poppy, poppy what do you say? As I love the words and they are a good talking point for the older children.

Martinmas

We enjoyed the story of St Martin, how he cut is cloak in half and gave it to a poor man to protect from the cold night air. We talked about caring for people who aren't as fortunate as us and what we could do to help them. We then talked about the importance of light in the dark, how it lights our way, makes us feel safe, we then made some lanterns, took them into the garden, along with some glow sticks to light our way. My girls love trying to see what patterns they can make with the glow sticks in the dark.

St. Martin, St. Martin, St. Martin
Rode through snow and wind,
On his horse, which carried him quickly away.
St. Martin rode with a light heart,
His cloak kept him good and warm.

In the snow sat, in the snow sat,
In the snow, there sat a poor man,
He didn't have clothes, he wore only rags:
"Oh help me in my distress,
Otherwise the bitter Frost will be my death!"

St. Martin, St. Martin, St. Martin pulls upon the reins,
His horse stands still near the poor man,
Without delay, with his sword St. Martin
Cuts the warm cloak in half.

St. Martin, St. Martin, St. Martin quietly gives up half,
The beggar's intention was to thank him,
St. Martin however was riding away in haste
With half his cloak.

St. Martin lies down quietly to rest,
In a dream the Lord appears.
He says: "Thank you, horseman,
For what you did to me."

Day of the Dead

Fireworks

I would say all my children love the fireworks but there are a couple who love the patterns in the sky but hate the noise but what they all do love is creating firework pictures. We spent a fair bit of one day making firework pictures and talking about them, the glitter season has started and we will be finding glitter probably until the middle if not the end of January. We have experimented with glue and salt for one of firework pictures, they were fascinated with how the paint moved through the salt pictures.

Our first pictures were glue and lot and lots of glitter.

 For the second lot I wanted to try something different that I had seen, involving glue, salt and water colours, have been told it works as well with food colouring but have yet to try it.

So step one is use glue to create you firework scene.

Sprinkle wet glue with salt and then shake of spare salt.

Then dab the salt/glue mixture with the water colour paint and watch the paint spread out.

The finished work.

I asked if they wanted to have a go painting with the remaining water colour paint, which they did, one loved just seeing the paint merge together and then mixing it to make lots of different shades of brown.

Bonfire pictures.

Spider Webs and Making The Most of Autumn

Following on from weaving spiders webs, watching some clips on how spiders spin their webs and a nature hunt for spiders webs, I thought I would make some templates for stain glass windows. I spent last night drawing and then cutting out black card, rather relieved I only had 3 to make.

The children explored the different coloured paper, deciding on colours and shapes they wanted to use, love the finish result, at the rate we're going I am going to need more windows to display the transparencies, window stars etc that we are making.

Enjoying the most of Autumn, we are lucky to live near a variety of woods and very near us is lovely oak tree and every year the children thoroughly enjoy playing in the leaves, scooping them up into piles and jumping in them, throwing the leaves in the air and seeing what happens, making patterns, as well as collecting some to take home, hours of fun are had under this one tree.