Before - after: Our new calendar and weather station

I've already written a post about how I made our weather board which also includes some emotions too. I've made some changes to it and added some more details.

I wanted to include days, months and seasons as well. So I repainted the board (the old tray) like 6 times as the paint didn't want to cover the black letters I'd written on it earlier. More or less I managed with the painting and on the top, I wrote DAY, MONTH and SEASON. I also made laminated cards. The days are hand-written both in English and in Hungarian, the months are printed but I decorated every month according to what's typical in that month. I found 4 pictures depicting the four seasons. I printed some more varied weather pictures you can find on the link. In this way, the many sources and styles make it more eclectic and more eye-caching than one kind of template (although you can find several of them online - see links later). Of course, I laminated them all and also added sticky magnets on the back.

The weather display is in the middle and at the bottom of the board you can find the feelings.

On the side of our book case next to the weather board, I printed a monthly calendar where every day we can leave a dot with our much loved dot markers.


Before:

After:

As you can see our day turned bad (have a look at the feelings section -silly and sad... it was true for both of us... so sorry for the poor quality of the photos.

started as a fun day

making a mark

I don't think I'll change this calendar and weather station in the near future but here I collected some links of how others do it. There are some real professional ones among them:

Our classroom calendar - from Counting Coconuts

Alas, we do not have such a great wall to use.

Our calendar routine - from My Montessori Journey

Free printable weather chart for preschoolers - by Paint On The Ceiling

I really liked this one, but unfortunately the whole thing is on an A/4 sheet which would be too small for us. The design is beautiful.

Weather chart - by Rowdy in Room 300

Easy to use, colourful but it's only weather

My weather station - by boys GERMS

It's a showpieces, I love it! Though not for my little one. She would destroy it within seconds.

Homeschool Room Organisation (Calendar and weather station) - by The Princess and the Tot

Wow!

The links above contain quite a lot of free printable materials.

Our calendar and weather display is rather modest compared to the others I linked in but it serves great fun and supports our bilingual learning process.

Pizza time

E. is quite excited every time she can spend some time in the kitchen with me. For me it's rather a challenge and I need to be extra relaxed,  plus in a good mood to shoulder all the mess and fuss around it.

Whenever I pull myself together and dare to enter the kitchen with a 2,5 year old hurricane to do some cooking or baking projects, it's always fun and the result is fantastic, though.

Cooking and baking together together with your child/children always gives you a great chance to learn and practice new things. Not only kitchen activities like whisking, stiring and pouring but also your second language.



This is what we did a few months ago when E. made her first pizza.

Today I wasn't prepared for the kitchen mess so I only entered into the spirit of painting.

While doing it we practiced a lot of food names:

salami
fish
tomato slices
corn
olives
pineapple
mushroom
pizza dough
salt (shake)

As well as colours and how to get certain colours by mixing two:

red + blue = purple
yellow + red = orange
red + green = brown

The kitchen stayed clutter- and mess-free and we were all happy.

More fun with the ABC

E. has an unquenchable thirst for the letters and the alphabet. Here are 2 more activities we've done recently.  

1. Giant alphabet puzzle
2. Salt dough letters

- ABC giant puzzle

I was lucky enough to get hold of this giant alphabet puzzle in a secondhand toy shop. No piece is missing. There are one or two pieces that are a little stained but otherwise it is in great condition.

When E. is putting the puzzle pieces together she is singing the ABC song or we need to listen to it. (A money-saving trick: you do not need to buy a lot of English music CDs. Just turn the youtube videos into mp3 music files with a converter)

While we are putting the puzzle together we name the pictures like A is for apple (like in the picture) and add some more words starting with that letter: ant or angel or antler. (I usually come up with words that she knows but if not we always have paper and pencils around to draw the unknown thing, or if we have it at home we go and have a look at it)

We have some foam letters which are the same size as the capital letters written on our giant puzzle. In the picture below E. is placing the foam letters on the puzzle. It was her own idea.

I use this alphabet puzzle even with adult students; it helps a lot with spelling and pronunciation.

- Salt dough letters

When E. turned 2 and a half last November we made her the very first home-made salt dough (1 cup of salt, 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of boiling hot water). And it was a hit.

I found this  cheap set of ABC cookie cutters in a One-Euro shop. It has just one problem: letter S is the other way round.

spooning the ingredients

Not only was she learning/pracising words like kneading, rolling pin, mix and stir, add, measure but also strengthened her arms and hand muscles.

my little helper

First, the letters need to be in the right order of the alphabet

Cutting

E. helped to put the letters on a baking paper that I'd place on a tray and we put them all in the oven to dry (at 50 °C).

Next day the painting started:

We used one colour at a time, but when we did this project this year colour mixing kicked in to make new colours like purple, brown or orange.

Ever since we have been playing with the letter as they are lying on E.'s shelf in the living room.