Five For Friday - It's Raining Again!

Instead of complaining about the rain (since it seems we're going to be stuck with it anyway), why not choose projects, crafts and activities to Celebrate the Rain ?

Links to five pages of ideas to get you inspired:

Preschool Educations Arts and Crafts for any weather

A to Z Kid's Stuff - Rain

Preschool Express with Jean Warren (my hero!)
The Magic of Rain

For Older Children (grade school) a unit on Weather and Rainbows

Step by Step Childcare has five pages of their own ideas for a rain and umbrella theme including a related books list!

The Beginning

We began our summer together today - Miss Maya and her Grammy.
It seemed fitting that we begin by making a calendar, both to record and anticipate the wonder filled summer ahead.
Our calendar is made from a large sheet of poster board. Half of it is the traditional calendar part, with little boxes for each of the days of June, July and August.
The other half has big boxes left for pictures to illustrate each month - pictures from magazines or the newspaper, pictures we take with the digital camera and then print, pictures we draw.
The calendar boxes have room for small pictures too. We may want to leave a drawing of a special day.

Beginning tomorrow, and for each day of the summer, we will start our morning together by going out on the deck to see what the weather will be.
We'll come back inside and Maya will color in that day's box with an appropriate color marker - yellow or orange for a bright, sunny day; gray for clouds; blue for rain.
We might add more detail by drawing a melting ice cube if it's very hot, or a kite if the day is windy.

We have already illustrated some special days - Great Grammy's birthday in June and Maya's birthday in August...
A Splendid Summer lies ahead.