A Year Full Of Stories

Been thinking over the last few weeks on changing or adding to the ways I have been doing things with L, she is wanting to learn her letters now, which I am happy to do, had planned to wait till she was older but she is eager so will be led by her. She is really curious about the world around, loves maps and animals so was really pleased when I came A Year Full of Stories, a story from around the world for every week of the year. Using the story and then looking at that country on our Maps book and depending on what she picks out, asks questions about will then lead us into whatever activities we do or don't do. We will just see how it goes we might do the whole year or change depending on interest. Will probably still carry on some theme planning as well, as that works well with all the children, mine and the minded ones.

So our first story was Father Frost a story from Russia. So we snuggled up and read the story and then sat and looked at Russia in the Maps book. L is interested in the reindeer, kandinsky and the Ural Mountains. So first stop we went searching for Kandinsky's paintings on the internet, thought we would start with Squares with Concentric circles first. Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow in 1866 and his style of painting was expressionism and abstract art. M and I have had some interesting discussions on what that means and looking at different artwork of that style, not her favourite art period, she loves the impressionists. 

M wanted to try to copy this painting using chalk pastels, L decided to do the same, this is their interpretation.

 We then spent some time looking at some of his other art work before then finding some you tube clips featuring reindeer, L is happy now that she knows what sound they make but not too impressed that her new animal book doesn't have anything on them!