Guest Blog: All Through The Year by Jane Godwin and Anna Walker

Written by Jodie McAlister: An Aussie mum to Vanna (4) and Taula (8 months) living, working, reading and playing in Nuku’alofa Tonga and holidaying on the farm in Australia

Review

This book is a treasure trove of memories following the year’s highlights and progress.  Picking it up and flicking through the pages feels a bit like touching a hand-sewn quilt; you can literally feel the love on each page. 

The book follows the months of the year and displays favourite activities as the seasons pass.  The text is focused on the child’s memories, feelings and emotions as each event occurs but as with all great picture books it is the glorious illustrations that add that special something to this creation. 

The use of mass media and collage on the cover art is beautifully done and gives the whole book a gorgeous hand made feel – I would have loved to see this technique continued throughout the pages.  A very special book which allows an emotional attachment to some, if not all, of the events for every Australian family.

Here’s how we used the LBBC Activity Time:

Read

After reading through the book we decided to focus on January and Summer for our artistic creation.  Given that we don’t have a printer at home on the farm we made our own tree template and decorated it with all the things we love to do over the Summer when we are in Australia on holidays.  This year it included hay carting with the boys on the farm, playing cricket, feeding the pet Galah and Christmas fun.

To highlight the use of different mediums such as newspaper leaves in the artwork of  All Through the Year we also used the news paper to cut out words which represented our holiday fun.  We picked leaves from the garden to add to our tree and you could even put some left over Christmas paper leaves on as well.

It would be nice to keep this up through the seasons of the year – if not the months – as this would make a lovely art work at the end of the year and, just like the book, be a treasure trove of memories.

Play

A fun way to use our art for more play was to take a picture just before we had finished and then one after – this way we could use our own art for a game of spot the difference.  Then when we printed out the pictures Vanna had fun looking for the differences (there are only two for those of you keen to play too).

(When searching for paints and pencils I found our 20 + year old school pencils put away in a cupboard –with our names on them thanks to my dear mum).

We also had lots of fun actually playing the games represented in our collage – lots of backyard cricket and unstructured play on the farm moving rocks and playing in old cars and on the tractor and bikes.  The holidays are great for relaxing and breaking the routines that keep us in line all through the year.

Create

Another way to celebrate the fun of summer is to make a collage of photos from all the fun things you have been doing as a family together over summer.  It is really the same idea as the tree but using of all those summer snap shots.  You could print them out and let the kids arrange them.  If you want to keep the multi media theme going feel free to add words or photos from the paper or magazines that represent your activities – such as the movie add if you’ve been at the pictures, sports photos or tickets from shows, rides or amusement parks, another lovely keepsake of your holiday fun or a lovely thank you card for the special people with whom you have shared the holidays.

If you, like us, have had little time for normal arts and crafts throughout January now might be a good time for a few activities to get little minds and hands ready for all that awaits them when preschool / school starts in the coming weeks.