- chart paper
- crayons
- marker
- paper
- pictures representing the four seasons (if possible, the same scene including a tree that shows changes over the seasons)
- fall
- season
- spring
- summer
- winter
MA Standards:
English Language Arts/Writing/W.PK.MA.2: Use a combination of dictating and drawing to explain information about a topic.
MA Draft Standards:
Earth and Space Sciences/Earth’s Systems/ESS2.E: Use data to describe how local weather changes from day to day and over the seasons and recognize patterns in those changes. [Change]
Head Start Outcomes:
Literacy Knowledge/Early Writing: Uses scribbles, shapes, pictures, and letters to represent objects, stories, experiences, or ideas.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Composition 16: Use their own words or illustrations to describe their experiences, tell imaginative stories, or communicate information about a topic of interest.
Science and Technology/Living Things and Their Environment 16: Observe and describe seasonal changes in plants, animals, and their personal lives.
Draw and Write Together: The Seasons of the Year
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
ELA Focus Skills: Concepts of Print, Listening and Speaking, Vocabulary
Remind children that the family in Vegetable Garden planted their seeds in spring, tended the garden all summer, and harvested, or gathered, the vegetables in the fall. If you’ve already covered the seasons of the year, review them using the pictures. If not, guide children to name the four seasons in the year: winter, spring, summer, and fall or autumn.
Discuss characteristics of the different seasons in the area where you live. (winter is cold, snowy; summer is hot, sunny; spring is warm, rainy; fall is cool, etc.) Tell children that seasons are not the same in all areas of the world. Then say, Many people plant seeds in spring. The rain helps the plants grow. Many days in spring are warm and sunny. The sunlight helps the plants grow.
Write children’s responses on chart paper labeled “The Seasons.” Encourage children to draw pictures showing the different seasons outdoors. Guide them to show trees in bloom in spring, leaves falling in fall, and bare branches in winter. Help each child label his or her picture with the season shown.
Adaptation: In groups with older children, ask them to fold a sheet of large drawing paper to make four sections and then to draw the same scene in each of the four seasons to show the differences. Children can use the pictures you showed them as reference.