Hello everyone,
Do you celebrate Spring in your country? Is there something you may do especially for when the first day of Spring arrived?
Here in Romania we do. We celebrate Spring by making Mฤrศiลoare, a small brooch that men and boys offer to women and girls.
The tradition is old and all my life, when the 1st of March was about to come, I knew I will be wearing a lot of brooches. Can you girls @gabrielatravels, @erikah, @pinkwizz back me up? How many Martisoare did you ever received in your lifetime? Can you count them? Cause I can't Hahaha ๐๐ท
Also these little objects called Martisoare are mandatory to have two intertwined red and white strings with a hanging tassel.
Anyways, here in Romania is the same with the Snowdrop flower. It's believed to represent Spring because it's the very first flower to bloom right after the winter is over. When we see snowdrops already growing and blooming, we know Spring is just around the corner.
This year, I wanted to do some crafts with my little one on this occassion, but he said he's not into mood for crafting. I said Ok, we'll do something else. And within a few minutes, I came with a few ideas and worksheets. AND..... eventually, we worked on some Martisoare too, even though it wasn't planned. ๐ค๐
Storytelling Through Drawing
We started with this Language activity. It was something to do for the first time and I really liked it.
There was a short story that we read and after that, Caleb had to draw what was the story about.
The text says this:
The winter gathers her coat and prepares to leave.
The sun sends more heat towards the Earth, and the birds sing with more courage.
Spring is near. He sends his messengers. One of them, a SMALL and DELICATE snowdrop, came out of Ana's garden yesterday. FINE and IMMACULATE, it passed the frozen layer of snow to announce the arrival of the spring procession.
Ana, the little girl in the garden to whom the little miracle appeared, looks at him in amazement. She does not understand how such a small and delicate flower managed to overcome the cold and the frost.
Her grandmother tells her: See, Ana? It doesn't matter that we are small, the important thing is that we don't give up and keep doing what we set out to do, until we succeed!
Ana smiles. Snowflake is an example of COURAGE and perseverance.
Caleb is not soo good when it comes to drawing. But he did his best. Te purpose wasn't really to reinforce drawing skills, it was more about storytelling and see how many details he can recall after hearing the story.
It's a good option for narrating the story with kids who love to draw.
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Letters
Then, based on the story we just read, we managed to complete these three worksheets.
At first, he had to put in order the letters to reconstruct some of the words found in the narrative: SMALL, FINE, WHITE and COLD.
What you see below, is my son's writing, at 5 years old.
Here, he had to circle the first letter of each word. Write the letters in order, in the boxes below. What word did you discover?
It was, of course, SNOWDROP.
Read the words. Color those consisting of one syllable with red, those of two syllables with green and those of three syllables with brown.
This was quite shocking because I dont remember to talk about syllables with Caleb and the moment he saw the worksheet, he started to complete it himself. He knew how to solve this with no help at all. I don't know when and how he learned what a syllable is and how words can be split into syllables, but he just knew.
With this ocassion, I did a bit of research on the spot to explain, however, what a syllable is and how can we tell how many are into a word, but I still need to find a way to explain it better.
Parts of Plant. Snowdrop
We didnt get in too many details, I noticed my son isnt really interested in Anatomy of plants, but maybe it's too early for this.
We named only the basic parts like flower, leaf, stem, bulb and root.
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How to draw a Snowdrop
It's much simple when you're having a pattern for drawing.
And I think Caleb did just fine for the first time. I didnt push him too much because he doesnt seem to like drawing these days and I thought that if I'd force him and push him to do more or better, he might lose even the little interest he has for drawing.
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Snowdrop Painting
This was my favorite because it brought back so many memories from my childhood. We used to paint snowdrops in early school every year (that is more than 20yrs ago) and I remember using toothpaste.
It's been some time since we last painted and I think both me and Caleb enjoyed doing this together.
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Spring Symbols in Romania, Martisoare
About Martisoare, I have some old content you may look at. -->
Flowers made out of painted pumpkin seeds ๐ธ๐ฎ๐๏ธ๐จ
As I said already, Caleb didnt want to do crafts. And when I searched for all the worksheets to work on, I also found these Spring Symbols, a coloring worksheet. They are all Nature Signs of Spring coming like sun, snowdrop, butterflies, ladybugs, flowers, birds, bees etc.
Basically, we named a few Spring Heralds, signs to look for when February is coming to an end. We started to draw them, together. I must say I enjoyed drawing same or more than my son did. ๐คฃ
And, because I am too creative haha ๐ , I thought to stick these wooden popsicle craft sticks on the back, add a white and red string and turn them into Martisoare. So we did! And we were more than happy to have something to offer all the women in our lives like grannies and ants.
I did not have a traditional red and white string with hanging tassel, but I could make something similar, without the tassel though.
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Reading about Spring Flowers
Finally, we finished our learning by reading about Spring Flowers. We also have these Montessori Flashcards you see in the photo and we could find some of the spring flowers on it and this way, hopefully, helped with memorizing them.
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I think it was so much learning with all this, in one hour. I am happy I can work with Caleb and keep him active and do all these diverse activities.
I didnt expect to learn and do so many things in such a short time, but somehow everything came natural, activity after activity.
If I'd have to pick one activity from all this, will be the first one. To draw what we hear. I think that was a new exercice for Caleb and I realized we read very often, but I don't encourage my son to narrate the story himself afterwards. And this is something I want to work on in order to develop his language skills and vocabulary, attention to details and imagination. I want him to express better and actually @cirangela just wrote a post about this last week, and I can't wait to try her strategy.
Thank you everyone for reading,
Have a lovely day โ๏ธ
Sending you a virtual Martisor ๐ท
missdeli
Here in Venezuela spring is a beautiful time but the truth is we do not carry out any activities to celebrate these dates. I love the activities that you did with your child, and when you mention reading stories, it is excellent for them at this age, my 3-year-old daughter has an incredible retention capacity, I only read the story to her once and she can then repeat it of course In their own way, it is surprising that they look like little sponges.
Yes, they're like sponges. Thats what Maria Montessori said and all her pedagogy is around this: kids have spongy brains and it's really important what we do in the early seven years of their lives.
How is Spring where you live? I think you dont have four seasons, right? Maybe thats why you dont celebrate it.
It was hard to count how many Martisoare I was receiving in a single year, don't make me try to figure out how many were in my whole life, hahaha
Hahhaaaahaa! ๐คฃ๐
I still have some from my childhood, some special ones that I keep in my memory box :))
I can't either ๐Caleb on the other hand is a real artist! I love the crafts and the drawings. He's lucky to have such a smart mom and you're lucky to have such a smart kid :) ๐๐ค
haha, I knew it!๐ However, thank you for your lovely thoughts, appreciate it! ๐๐ค๐
Cool
thanks.
Frumoasa luna Martie, insa astept primavara aia calduroasa sa se instaleze odata...
Eu savurez fiecare luna din an, cu schimbarile ei. Imi place si tranzitia asta de la frig la cald, e chiar placut si am multe amintiri legate de perioada asta care aduc un plus de nostalgie. Dar inteleg ce zici. Per total, la fel simt si eu.
But what beautiful activities carried out with Caleb, I certainly learned a lot in spring time.
Greetings and blessings.
Thank you!