Outdoor Living... and Letter Weekends

Unusually, our corner of the world has been a blaze of sunshine and warm temperatures all week.  It's been gorgeous!  All week we have been outside as much as possible: eating outside, ironing outside, we had a fire and cooked outside, and really just being outside.  

With sun hats firmly on and slathered with high factor sun-cream we have just been loving the outdoors.  Our nap-time coincides splendidly with the warmest time of day, so the children are nicely resting - siesta-style - in the shade inside.

The other thing we've started to introduce is a letter day on a weekend.  I don't really plan too much for the children to do on the weekends, because I want them to be relaxed times with the family, and we are often so busy with Scouting activities and events, or Hubby being at work, that it's better just to go with the flow.  However, following C's lead, each weekend morning, he selects a letter from the "letter box" and puts it in a basket.  We have a quick brainstorm of words which start with that letter.  At points during the day when we need some direction I quickly come up with something that starts with that letter.  We also have a go at writing the letter on paper and on the easel chalkboard.  


Last Saturday we had the letter N:

• We wrote a letter to "Nana"
• We "noticed" some things
• We found our "name" on some things
• We ate something "nice"
• we wrote in a "notebook"
• we practiced our "numbers"
• we trimmed our "nails".

Last Sunday we were very busy (plus it was X!), so didn't do much to do with our letter.  Yesterday we had the letter F:

• we played "football"
• we counted our "fingers"
• we had a "finger of fudge"
• we pressed some "flowers"

Today we had the letter B, but there haven't really been any occasions to use it, as we have just been playing outside all day, though I did suggest that we get the "baby bath" out to play with water in the garden, and also C's "bike".