Today we made a weather chart. The idea is that we each day add a leaf in a different color depending on the weather outside. Blue for rain, yellow for sunny, white for snow and deep orange for cloudy days.
As we were making it, I kept thinking; here we are making a tree where we will be adding a leaf each day when outside the leafs are falling one by one and before we know it will all be gone. Yes well this is a weather chart I told myself, so that we at the end of a year can tell what kind of weather we have been having, bring awareness to the different variations and rhythms of the outside weather, and perhaps make other observations.
We started by drawing a large "naked" tree on some brown packing paper
while I cut it out, Kaleena made leaf rubbings by placing the leaf under a piece of paper and rubbing with her block crayons over it, they are so pretty and I thought it might be nice to make a pretty arrangement and perhaps frame some of these in old wooden frames, a project for another time..
we made a bunch for the four different types of weather
taped our tree to the wall
and Kaleena added the first leaf to the tree, a blue one given the rain outside
~a peaceful evening to you~
christina i love this! we did a printed version of this from the book *all year round* but i love your take on it!
ReplyDeleteWhat a sweet idea! And her rubbings came out perfectly! I would love to see some pics of the tree as the year progresses. Keep us posted.
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely idea! I'm sure my little ones would love this:)
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea! I love it!
ReplyDeleteNow. I am interested in this: how will you place the leaves so that you can discern patterns?
ReplyDeleteOh - and forgive me, but I've got another question - on your header and Linda's there are flying birds to the right of your header image. Was this part of a template? I am SO curious to know - did the template image have flying birds on it, spilling them out to the right across the page? Not losing sleep over this, but plenty interested.
ReplyDeletewe have one in our school room as well...a tradition dating back to our first year of homeschooling back in 2006.
ReplyDeletewe used cardboard for the tree, as i thought it would hold up better over the years. we did actually have to do an upgrade this year, too many young ones pulling at the lower branches. :)
we cut our leaves out of construction paper & write the day number on them...but i love your idea of donig actual leaf rubbings...i might just have to knick that one to use on ours...;)
much love, jessi
K, as for how I will discern a pattern, I was thinking to simply observe how many rainy days, sunny days and so forth, perhaps do a chart at the end of a year. Yet as Jessi mentioned, perhaps I will also write a date on. As to placement, Kaleena simply adds a leaf each day where ever she wants.
ReplyDeleteAs for the birds, yes they were part of the template:)
Jessi,
thanks for the idea about the date, i might do that:)
warmly,
Christina
What a beautiful tree! I love the incorporation of the weather tree. Way back in my last life when I was a park naturalist, I made an observation tree in our nature center. Children could write or draw a picture of something they observed while at their visit to the state park, and then place it on the tree.
ReplyDeleteI think this would be a lovely addition to our home. Thank you for the idea.
Take care,
~carrie~
Thank you for the inspiration. I linked to your post at http://traininghappyhearts.blogspot.com/2012/01/2012-weather-tree-how-to-and-round-up.html
ReplyDelete