The Seasons Song

 

Gestures and activities to use with “The Seasons Song”

We’ll use some fun gestures with this song:

– during the chorus do the following gestures, standing with legs apart (see picture):

• “Spring” – hands up at 12 o’clock
• “Summer” – hands out at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock
• “Autumn” – hands straight down at 6 o’clock
• “Winter” – hands out at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock

– during the verses do the following gestures::

• “In the spring / summer / autumn / winter …” – hands out, waving in time with the music
• (Spring) “It’s nice and warm” – hug yourself looking warm and happy
• (Spring) “Let’s go for a picnic” – gesture eating delicious food
• (Summer) “It’s very hot” – fan your face looking hot and bothered
• (Summer) “Let’s go to the beach” – gesture swimming
• (Autumn) “It’s nice and cool” – wipe your forehead looking like you have cooled down
• (Autumn) “Let’s go for a walk” – gesture walking
• (Winter) “It’s really cold” – shiver and look cold
• (Winter) “Let’s play with the snow” – gesture patting a snowball into shape and throwing it

 

Using “The Seasons Song” in class

This is a really good song for learning the seasons.

1. Introduce the vocab: the four seasons. Before class prepare four pieces of paper with the following written on:
   • Draw a tree.  Draw flowers in the tree.  Draw a sun and clouds in the sky.
   • Draw a tree.  Draw lots of leaves in the tree.  Draw a big sun in the sky.
   • Draw a tree.  Draw some leaves in the tree.  Draw leaves falling off the tree.  Draw leaves on the ground.  Draw clouds in the sky.
   • Draw a tree with no leaves.  Draw snow on the ground.  Draw a cloud in the sky with snow falling.

   Four students are going to read these and draw the pictures on the board.  Alternatively, whisper the instructions into your students’ ears or show them flashcards to copy.

   In class, draw 4 large squares in the board.  Invite a volunteer student to come up to the board and draw the first picture inside the first of the 4 squares.  As the student is drawing, get the other students to guess what is in the picture (e.g. “What’s this?”,  “It’s a tree”).  Do the same with other students for the remaining three pictures.

   Once all 4 pictures have been drawn, point at the first picture and ask “When does the tree look like this?”.  Elicit / Teach “Spring” and write the word under the picture.  Do the same for all for pictures and chorus each season word 4 times.

2. Play “Seasons Word Association Draw”. Divide the class into teams (of 3 or 4 students). Give each team one pen and lots small pieces of colored paper (e.g. Team A has only red paper, Team B has only blue paper, etc.). This is very important as you will be giving scores to each team based on the amount of pictures they have drawn.

   Next, put 4 boxes in the 4 corners of your classroom.  Each box should be labelled with a season (e.g. one box will have “Spring” written on it, another “Summer”, etc.).

   Now model the activity: take one piece of paper and draw an ice cream.  Elicit the word and then say “Where should I put this?” and gesture towards the 4 boxes.  After receiving a reply for summer, go to the summer box and drop the paper in it.  Next do the same for spring (a flower), autumn (a pumpkin) and winter (a woolly hat).

   Finally drop a prize into each box (e.g. some candy or stickers, etc.) and explain that the team with the most (correct) pictures in each box will win the prize.  Place a timer in view of everyone and set 5 minutes.  Then say “Go!”.

   As each team has only one pen they will have to work together to come up with ideas and draw them.  Then one player will have to rush to a box and drop the picture into it.  Teams will probably find summer and winter easy but may need some prompting from you for spring and autumn.  As they are drawing, walk around and ask questions (e.g. What is that?) and elicit / teach vocab.  Make sure someone draws some key vocab from the song that will be sung later in the lesson (a picnic, beach, snow).

   When the timer goes off get everyone to stop.  You are going to count the number of papers each team has in each box – but you are going to be really strict!  Throw out any badly drawn pictures which you can’t guess what they are and any pictures that are wrong or are not season specific.  Elicit what each picture is when you hold it up.  Count the scores and write them on the board.  Then tell the class that they have an additional 5 minutes to finish but must not draw any pictures that other teams have drawn.  Set the timer for a further 5 minutes and start.

   When the timer goes off, be strict again about which pictures earn points and finally give out the prizes to the teams with the most points.

3. Do “Season objects writing” activity. Your students are going to write the words for the pictures they have just drawn, so this is a great activity if your students are at a high enough level to write words (even with spelling mistakes).  If not (for younger students), skip this activity and go on to point 4.  Take the boxes with pictures inside and give the pictures out randomly to each group.  Model by holding up one of the pictures (e.g. a flower) and elicit the word.  Then turn over the piece of paper and write “flower” on the back.

   Give a time limit (say 5 minutes) and get each group to write words on the back of as many pictures as they can, using the one pen (again, so they will have to work as a team).  If a team does not know the word, they can send one person up to the teacher with the picture to ask what it is – but the teacher will only say the word and will refuse to spell it – the students will have to try their best to spell each word.

   When the timer goes off, tell everyone to stop writing.  On the board draw two intersecting lines so the board is divided into four equal squares.  Write a season in each of the squares.  Go around the class asking for the words they have written and write the words on the board – for each correct spelling the team wins a point (also, make sure they correct their spelling mistakes on the back of the pictures).  At the end total up the points and award a prize to the winning team.

4. Play “Season Bingo”. Keep the same groups together and the pictures that they have drawn.  Get each team to deal out the pictures so that each student is holding the same number of pictures.  The class is going to play “Season Bingo” with the pictures.  The teacher says a season and a word (e.g. “summer – ice cream”) and any students holding that picture can put it in the middle of their table.  Keep going until one student has discarded his/her last card and shouted “Bingo!”.  Play a few rounds for fun. 
5. Sing “The Seasons Song”. Before class, print off the song poster for The Seasons Song.  Put the song poster on the board and elicit the seasons and the activities on it.  Then get everyone to stand up and follow you doing the actions and singing (as described above in Gestures and activities to use with “The Seasons Song”). Play the song through 2 or 3 times.
6. Do the “Seasons Clock” craft. This is a great craft which you can hang on the classroom walls and update each season or even each month.  Before class there are a few things you will need to prepare:
   • cut large circles out of construction paper or white cardboard – enough for each group of 3 or 4 students.  This will be the base of the season clock.
   • for spring, you’ll need different colored paper or card: reds, pinks, blues, greens – students will cut into flower shapes (for really little ones you’ll have to cut flower shapes out yourself before class)
   • for summer, you’ll need sand or yellow glitter (you can get from craft stores) – students will make a beach scene
   • for autumn, you need different colored paper or card: dark reds, oranges and browns – students will cut into leaf shapes (for really little ones you’ll have to cut leaf shapes out yourself before class)
   • for winter, you’ll need cotton wool / cotton balls – students will make a snow scene with this.
   • you’ll also need glue and pens or even paint if you wish

   Put the class into groups of 3 or 4 and give out the materials to make the season clocks.  Start off by getting everybody to draw 4 lines from the center of the circle to the outside, so that you create 4 different areas (one for each season). Write the word for each season in each segment. If you have taught months, get everybody to write the months in order around the edge of the clock, with 3 months in each segment (you can just use the first letters of each month), so that it looks like the image below:

   

   Now comes the first part – everyone is going to get creative and decorate the clock – cutting out flower shapes and gluing onto spring, cutting out leaf shapes and gluing onto autumn, making a beach scene in summer (put glue on the paper and then sprinkle over the sand to make the beach – use blue colored pens or paint for the sea) and gluing cotton wool for snow in winter.  Let everyone add extras, e.g. a big sun in summer, seasonal clothing, etc.

   When everyone has finished, stick the crafts onto the wall and give each team a pin (or something sticky, like blue tak) to place in the season (or month) that it is now.

   In future lessons you can refer back to the clocks and have your students move the pin as the seasons (and months) change.

7. Play “Find the Season Pictures”. To end the lesson, we’ll have some fun with the pictures the students drew in point 2 above.  Clear all the desks and chairs to the edge of the room.  Collect up all of the pictures and then randomly scatter them around the room.  Next, pick the Summer box from point 2, and say “Ok, everyone.  Find all the summer pictures and put them in the box, Ready … Go!”.  Everyone rushes around picking up pictures and placing them in the summer box.  Then do the same for the other seasons.
8. Set Homework: For homework, give out the “Four Seasons” worksheet.