Weather Activities for Preschool

We started introducing concepts such as today's weather, the seasons of the year, and weather changes at the beginning of our school year. Every day we discuss these topics during circle time. I'll have to make a post dedicated to our daily circle time/calendar rituals (note to self!) but the curriculum we follow focused this past week on changes that occur within our world such as hibernation, changing of seasons, and weather patterns.

We read this wonderful book called "Outside" by Deirdre Gill. It's EVERYTHING to my three-year-old. I could read it over and over. In fact, I did! We also enjoyed listening to the audio book version that came with our copy from Scholastic.

This book describes the adventures of a young boy who plays outside on a snowy day. He imagines that the snow is everything from a castle to a dragon, and after much yearning for his brother to join him - he gets a special surprise at the end. The phrases are very short and allow for just the right amount of description on each page of beautiful illustration.

"Outside" was a great segway into learning about the weather because right now our outside world looks a lot like the weather in this book - snowy, cold, winter. However, we were able to extend the inside cover illustration of a single window looking outside into a neat little craft in which each pane of the window shows a different weather type of the artist's choosing.

We started with two pieces of construction paper, one white and one black. 

Fold the quarters and cut the inside of the rectangular "panes" and then glue the two pieces of paper together.

Then use your favorite medium to illustrate the center of each window pane.

Noah helped me to make the "sample" which highlighted sunny, snowy, windy, and rainy weather.

DG also focused on his own rendition of the same weather.

We then reinforced with some YouTube videos (yay for a free resource!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfAB4BXSHOA - The Weather Song "Sun, Rain, Wind, and Snow" from The Singing Walrus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUSbazn3STo - "What's the Weather Like Today?" from The Kiboomers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbfsQgiqD9M - "What's the Weather Like?" a short interactive show featuring a very cute bird puppet (this was my kids' favorite).

We sing the "What's the Weather Like Today?" song every morning during circle time and DG is always excited to be the weather man and give us the weather report! He now has some fun new words to include like "cold front" and "meteorologist" from our weather unit. ;)