Spring- The four Seasons

1st  Grade language: The Spring
nit 8, (Greek Educational System)

Go to the lesson

spring 

 

Materials for the Lesson

CD player
Sound of wind for Autumn and Winter
Spring: Sound of Birds
Summer: Sound of Cicadas

The Teachers bell

The teacher can find sounds at:
http://naturesoundsfor.me/load/compositions-by-sounds

Layout of the classroom

 The desks are set aside so as to have empty space in the middle.

1st Phase

The children will tear up a piece of paper from their writing book in very small pieces. To use it as snow in the next phase.
Also they fold (like air-planes) a piece of (preferably black) piece of paper, to make some birds (black-birds according to the lesson).

The children climb to the mountain. With their backpacks. Some go over the desks, come down, go up on the chairs and come down. And so up and down they go around the class, representing the ups and downs of the mountain paths.

2nd Phase

At the mountain, there are trees that change during the four seasons.

Spring, Summer, Autumn & Winter.
The children divide in two teams.

Pantomime:

SPRING, Team A:  the children represent the trees, they grow and develop.
The teacher guides and the children start first on their knees from the floor, they come up slowly and -at the same time- expand their hands (like branches).
SUMMER, Team B: Passes along the children of team A and puts various stuff on their hands and arms that represent fruit. ( pencils, erasers, writing-books… etc)

 AUTUMN : Wind that is blowing on the CD player.  Αέρας που φυσάει στο CD. Team A: with the guidance and the cue, of the teacher, the children move like the trees when the wind blows them. The children lower their arms, fold their body, and make them-selves small so as to make the stuff on their arms fall down, like the leaves in autumn.
WINTER : Team B: Passes over the children of Team A, and showers them with the little white papers (that they made in Phase A) like snow in the winter.

3d Phase

 The teams reverse roles and the action repeats.

4th Phase

Enhancement of the Lesson with the other subjects of the same Subject Unit. .
1. One or more children of Team B, has in their hand  an improvised paper bird (preferably black) and when the teacher finds it suitable, it flies from tree to tree, enhancing the pantomime with more actions.

2. Our Journal: In one last phase, the children write in their diary what happened in class today. All the adventure with the seasons and the trip to the mountain.

5th Phase

The classroom is back to normal.
The teacher can enhance the original theme of the 4 Seasons, asking questions such as:
1. What are the most important (National or Religious) celebrations for each season. In Spring i.e. in Greece we have Easter, Summer St. Mary, Autumn (28th of October, National Celebration day), Winter, Christmas… etc.

2. When do we have the name-days of the children (Greece ) , ( John, Andreas, Anna in winter, Dimitris in Autumn, Anastasis, Irini in Spring, Maria in Summer. So we can create four columns with the names celebrating in every season.

3. What flowers, fruit, vegetable come out every season?
4. What birds and animals we find in every season etc.