Seasons – Summer

September 16, 2018 /

Summer is an easy one considering it’s still about 96° here – we talked about the heat (my little one now keeps feeling me and saying “hot”) and spent most of the morning at the splashpad cooling down! We used this as a time to reflect on our summer (helping build their memory skills) and talked about all the summer activities we did like playing in the sand, going swimming at the beach, going to the pool, having picnics outside, watching people fish on the lake, eating popsicles, going to the park etc.

We continued to talk about the leaves and how they are full and green in the summer versus the red and yellow we see in Fall. We created our own version of summer trees using our blank trees (from our Fall activities) and green paint! Although we could have done our Dot Art again I wanted to create something a little different so I let the kids use paint brushes and taught them how to dip their paint brush and then tap rather than brush to make the leaves. So many of our activities are easily adjusted or extended to work on new skills that they never get old!

 

We also continued our name letters using some of the green leaves they had collected on our way home this morning. Much like the ones we’ve done for each season I cut out their letters and placed contact paper over the hole so that they could stick the leaves on to create their “art” – its amazing to see how much they are getting out of this activity and how they are adjusting their techniques as they continue to practice sticking.

Our spring flower activity was such a hit (and got so much love from the OT) that we decided to do it again making suns this time! We used the same circle (cut out from a delivery food container) and painted some smaller clothespins to be the rays. Surprisingly they had an easier time opening & closing the smaller clothespins but maybe this was just because of all the practice with our flowers. I’m loving how reusable this craft is and can’t wait to see how many other ideas we can come up with to expand it! Thinking as they get bigger we can do matching games with shapes or stickers, add numbers to make clocks, or even make little animals out of them!

In honor of summertime we tried out a new popsicle stick activity this week too. I painted them with different colors and handed them out to all the kids with a water bottle each letting them work on their fine motor skills to place them into the bottle, shake them and dump them out! We were able to talk about all the colors as they put them in and even snuck in a little pre-math choosing one kid and having everyone watch and count as they put their sticks in! This has been a great independent activity for them too. It’s an easy one they can do in the kitchen while we cook dinner. Keeps them in sight, entertained and not under our feet! Plus I love watching each of their little personalities emerge – my patient oldest who will find all his sticks and put them in before dumping vs my impatient middle child who puts one or two in then gets excited to dump them out!

We finished off the day with some beach fun! We talked about lots of animals that live in the ocean (some of which we saw this summer) and I used our fishing puzzle to create a little fishing/beach play game. Not going to lie I’ve never actually dyed rice before so this was the first time for me and I couldn’t believe how easy it was! I had a bag that had been hiding in the back of the cupboard and was long since expired so instead of throwing it away decided to finally give it a try. I always figured it’d get weird and moldy (like wet when you dyed it) but it stays perfect and can be reused over and over again! Tiny bit of vinegar (a little bit less than a spoonful), food coloring and my old white rice, shook it up in an old coffee container and then spread it out to dry. I couldn’t believe how quickly it dried too! I made it in the morning thinking we could play before bed and by the time we finished eating/cleaning up breakfast (about ½ an hour) it was dry and ready to go! I added some of our kinetic sand (that has been in hiding since we moved to the new house) and the blue rice to really give it a beach look. I hid the fish from our magnetic puzzle and gave my kids the fishing rod that goes with the puzzle so they could go fishing!

When I was doing play therapy parents always used to tell me how they don’t buy puzzles because they are such a boring toy but we find so many fun and different ways to use them and extend lots of activities by finding pieces and then putting them back in the puzzle. It’s great for working on direction following, learning common household words (i.e. its on the couch) and following where you are pointing. My three had no idea they were learning anything though they just had so much fun with this puzzle in the sensory tray! My 2 year old is just about the perfect age for this – while all the babies loved it he actually understood the “please keep it in the bucket” part. Plus, he added their leaves from our nature walk and“helped” the turtle to the water “just like Moana!” It’s pretty cool to see how his pretend play is evolving now. For once I was also smart enough to do this project when their Dad was home which made clean up super easy – we did everything on an old sheet and then lifted it up together to make a little slide and dumped anything that had gotten out of the bucket back in. Now we are ready for summer play all year long!

I’m really excited to see how many other uses I can find for our dyed rice now that I know how easy it is! In case you’re interested in trying this out I’ve put some Amazon affiliate links to this super simple play tray below:

As summer comes to an end so does our Seasons week, but I like to think my kids are starting to understand the changing seasons and what each one holds! Looking forward to some more fall fun as we continue into September!

 

 

 

 

Weed Killer
Seasons - Spring

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