Union Jack Playdough

This activity was born out of a rainy day and one eye on the Jubilee celebrations coming up in June! I offered up the idea of making a Union Jack from play dough coloured red, white and blue. We are usually very free and easy when we make play dough and don't have any particular goal in mind, except to enjoy it. This time though I introduced a focus as the children had been a bit wild with the awful weather we had yesterday and some direction was in order! If you wanted to be more relaxed about it, you could just put out the three colours and some pictures of flags and other resources like glitter, sequins etc and see what the children come up with!

We pulled up some images of Union Jacks on google images and talked about how the Union Jack is made up of flags from England, Scotland and Ireland (poor Wales don't get a look in!). This page from Wikipedia was useful to show them the different shapes on the flags and help to break it down. We talked about the shapes that they would need, what they would make first (the white rectangle they decided) and how they could make the shapes they wanted. It was a challenge to them to control their hands to make the flag pieces they wanted. They started with a white rectangle, then made the large central cross, before adding the diagonal cross and finally, the blue triangles.

I thought they turned out really well and provided lots of chatter about shapes, techniques, and of course the United Kingdom and flags. I put them in the oven on a low heat to dry out. I hadn't really planned on starting Jubilee things this early but a rainy day forced my hand and it was fun - flags will be a good theme to follow through to the Olympics this year also.

I used my Mum's old failsafe recipe for the dough - 1 cup salt, 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons cream of tartar, 2 cups water with a dash of oil. My food colouring is really weak so I added a squeeze of paint and kneaded it through to make the colours.

A Montessori Mapping Activity

I set this activity up in response to Eve's interest in mapping and contours. The background work to this was a map that Eve drew with her Granny as part of extension activities to go with the Katie Morag books that the girls adore. Eve drew a map of an island that she dreamed up, using symbols to represent the man-made and natural features of the landscape - she made a key to go with it. I designed the components of this activity based on the elements that Eve had included on her map; contoured hills, lakes and rivers, marsh areas and woodland, footpaths and roads, houses and bridges. There was more on her map as it was an island but I simplified slightly to make it work better as a tray based activity. Above is the set-up that I did to play with it!

This picture shows the details of the contours. We explored contours further by running up and down gentle and steep inclines at a local nature reserve developed on an old colliery site. At this stage the girls understand it simply as 'close together lines = steep slope' and 'far apart lines = gentle slope'. I cut rounded shapes from the green felt in decreasing sizes so that the girls can build them up individually to put their creative stamp on their 'map'.

I also cut different shapes of blue to represent various bodies of water. We discussed whether lakes, ponds, reservoirs, rivers and canals were natural or man-made and the girls surprised me with their knowledge! Once again I kept it simple by leaving lakes as natural features, without muddying the water ('scuse the pun!) with man-made lakes! The girls can use whichever one they want when building their map.

This is a close-up of the 'woodland', made from felt with deciduous and evergreen trees stitched on with embroidery floss! All of the components are made with either felt or embroidery floss. I had thought that I would cut the rivers, roads and footpaths from felt also but realised during construction that the floss would be both more malleable to suit the girl's creative wishes, and more 'in scale' with the felt pieces (we're talking English rivers here, not the Amazon!). I hasten to add that the activity is not to scale, the floss just looked more believable scale wise!

This is how I set it up for the girls to use. The tray has a small chunky base on - it came from Ikea originally and I used to use it with purple sand for forming letters and numbers on. I cut the dark green felt to fit snugly, and the black box, filched from my literacy materials contains the mapping pieces!

This is a close up of the key that I made with felt pieces to match the ones that were in the black box. Some reading is required to decode the key, although I am anticipating that Eve will recognise many of the symbols from her map! I am looking forwards to introducing this activity to the girls for them to explore. They are very interested in rivers and landforms at the moment so I hope they find it fun!

Geography - Model of The Great Lakes

We are reading the lovely book 'Paddle to The Sea' by Holling Clancy Holling and using it as a springboard for some geography studies. After reading the first two chapters today we built a model of the great lakes using food packaging boxes propped up on bricks with a small opening for the water to overflow into the next 'lake'. Our levels needed a bit of tweaking as the girls poured water into the lakes. They really loved this simple activity and it was very effective in illustrating how the lakes flow into each other!

As the story begins in Canada with an Indian boy carving the canoe, we looked at the native Indian models that we brought back from Canada two years ago when we were there for my brother and sister-in-laws wedding. We have a tepee, a little doll traditionally dressed, a canoe with animals in, and a drum.

I've got various other geography related and Native Indian related activities in mind ready for exploring as we make our way through the book.

We Have Discovered Katie Morag!!!!

My Mum and Dad recently went on holiday to the Outer Hebrides in the North of Scotland, and they brought back two of these books for the girls. I can't even describe how wonderful they are. They have the most beautiful illustrations (see below) and use wonderful descriptive language with a few Scottish expressions thrown in also. The stories are based on a real life Island but the name is fictional and describe aspects of Island life. The stories are funny and engaging...... and my girls have fallen in love! I have since bought some more from Amazon and they are the mainstay of bedtime stories at the moment!

My Mum did a lovely activity with Eve, getting her to look at the map in the book and another map that Mum had brought back. Eve then drew her own map of a fictional Island and made a key on the back. She loved this activity and it was a great introduction to mapping. They also made 'porridgies' from the recipe in the book.... delicious..... even though nearly burned due to our crazy cooker super heating as it does randomly sometimes!