Summer Project begins.

We started off the day with a look at the weather and quickly decided it was going to be an indoors day! With that in mind I decided it was a great opportunity to start our 'summer project'. I really wanted the little girls involved in this too so we had already agreed on 'Zoo animals' as our theme because Phoebe, especially, really loves animals and these are ones she has seen in real-life and understands about (as much as a two year old can!) I wanted to get some pic's of the brood at work, but got too engrossed and only remembered afterwards - so there's pictures of the produce and the debris!! We had a great time and 'chatted' about zoos and conservation, using words like 'extinction' and what that means. Why are zoo important? Is it fair on the animals? All those kinds of things while we cut, stuck and coloured. I don't think the boys even thought about it as learning. It was all completely voluntary, although I did say that if one didn't want to carry on we would stop for the day because I really want it to be a 'together' project. That said I did let the girls go off - there is a limit to what I can expect of a 2 & 3 year old! The cutting and sticking was just about right though in length of time, ability and interest level for them, but the colouring would have been far too hard. Perhaps I need to get some Hama from Merry - have you got anything I could use on this theme Merry?

The start of our 'learning zone' resources



Not bad for a morning's fun!

The little drawing at the bottom will eventually be a 15 sheet mural with zoo animals stuck all over it in their various 'enclosures'. The boys worked really hard at this. I did two sheets and they did one each - it took us an hour. Really good though because they were having to think about colours, shades and textures to depict the different areas of ground and also they had to work together to agree what colour each part was going to be - so that the picture fits together well in the end.

All the ideas and materials are from www.learningpage.com - if you fancy it. The folder in the top picture is a 'fact file' - lots of interesting facts about 10 different zoo animals. The boys have each picked an animal they want to find out more about over the summer and they will make a project book about that animal - maybe!

The debris of the day!



And I put this last picture up simply because I think she's beautiful!!

Smile Boo


Strangely though, despite all this wonderful creative fun, the children have been at each other's throats - and mine - all day. Maybe it's the stormy, clammy weather - who knows? I was really glad when 8pm came around and peace descended on the house!

All in all a very nice day - and you should have seen Jacob learning to dive tonight - he never ceases to impress me!