Seasons, Calendar & Time Block

When I planned out my blocks for this 2nd grade year, I purposely set this block for January. The New Year celebration seemed to lend itself to this as perfect timing.
We started talking about the new year (think whole to parts)... then we went into Seasons. Of course, we have been talking seasons for years, but we started with Winter and then went around the year.

The Calendar we decided to make is more of a Wheel of the Year.. see my pic below. This is a beautiful way to illustrate the seasons with pictures and mark birthdays and other holidays and festivals.

They quickly learned the Months verse."Thirty days has September, April, June and November...."

Then we drew in our Main Lesson Books pictures of the months and a verse about each one. This was an extended lesson on writing for them. But, they loved drawing the monthly pictures. In most, they drew the same tree, but with different leaves and scenery depending on the month. Even though they knew the seasons, they seemed to really "feel" this by drawing it out.

We drew out a full calendar page for February in which we will document the weather and phases of the moon each day.

Time was a lot of fun to discuss. We talked about the ancient clocks:  shadow sticks, sundials, hourglasses and candle clocks and why people need to know what time it is.

Due to rainy weather, we made our own tree (tall candlestick) and used a flash light to demonstrate the sun rising in the east and setting in the west and how the shadows looked. The girls loved this! I think it turned out better because they could control the sun!

We then made a clock. (This was so easy and fun!) We painted our paper plates, drew on the numbers talking about minutes and hours and where they are on the clock. I brought in a lovely clock we have on the wall and showed them.