Greek Myths and Snow

So I am sat here catching up on my blog posts, we've had glorious sunshine today and I am looking back at photos from the beginning of February where we had lots of snow, well lots for us!! What a contrast in weather, we have spent most of today in the garden, L has helped weed the herb beds and then wash all the pots and trays, not my favourite garden job but she loves doing it. I emptied the back porch and cleaned it out, everyone left me alone as there was a rather large spider scuttling about. Hubby has tidied up the grape vine and then we all headed out for a lovely long walk, popped into the allotment to check its still there, well ok what state its in and what we need to do!

Our little Monday group this term, has been based around the Greek myths, my plan was to tell a story, then link craft, art and science activities to the stories. We've had the story of Echo and Narcissus, we talked about the meaning of the story, the emotions and feeling of the characters. Then went on to look at how echos happen and what animals and how and why they use echolocation. We then drew some daffodils and once that was finished, I dissected one, so they could see all the different parts of it. Our next story was Pandora, again we spent time talking about all the negative feelings that were let loose, if we could choose one negative emotion to put back in the box what would it be and why. Then why hope is so important to us and all the things we hope for! As a craft project I had then printed out some different shapes to colour in and then glue together to make a cube, tetrahedron and octahedron, I will say the last one was rather fiddly to glue together! I love the story of Arachne and Athene, after I told the story we looked at a book on spiders, they were intrigued with the trap doors spider, do check out some of the videos on you tube about this spider they are amazing creatures. We then went on to do some weaving projects, which they loved.

I've also told the story of the Minotaur, linked with lots of mazes, they had a lot of giggles trying to draw one on the patio, then decided it was more fun to colour all the steps up the garden a different colour. Highly amusing when your black cat decides to roll in it and comes in shimmering with pink and purple patches! We made some origami birds to go with the story of Daedalus and Icarus. If L wasn't allergic to dairy we would of also tried some different Greek cheeses, though we did get to make some pitta breads, that were rather yummy.

Our last bit of fun was making a curve from a straight line or parabolic curves, Mum in the Mad House has some lovely printable for this.

Now the beginning of February we had snow, L and I went for a wonderful walk through the woods and said at times it looked just like a scene from Narnia.

Home to build a snowman with M and O

Max on the other hand was far from impressed with all the white stuff and opted to stay inside and just watch us.

We also made Ls day by taking a trip into town by bus to go and see the new How to Train Your Dragon movie, which we all enjoyed. She was very excited and has spent lots of time at home drawing various dragons, think I might have to take some photos to share, I am running out of wall space for them all!!