Weather Week for Preschoolers - Part 1

With Easter over, St. Patrick's Day gone and Valentine's Day way behind us, it is now time to get back to our "regular", more classic, themes at Sorting Sprinkles. I thought we'd get a fresh start with a mini-unit on the weather since April is usually a month where Germany gets an interesting mix of everything (rain, snow, sun, clouds, you name it). Unfortunately, I did not pick the right week for a mix but that is ok...There's always next year! ;)

 

Weather Play Dough - Art & Literacy

During times of sickness, I tend to put our play dough away (eek...germs!). As such, we haven't modeled much lately except with the little bit we had left from the homemade batch my friend had made and given us. Now that everyone is healthy again (yay!), the "Doh" is out again! Here, our weather play dough. I made some "weather cards" in three colors and brought out a basket filled alphabet molds (from a "play doh kit") and three cans of play dough (I'm sure you can guess in which colors :) ). Adrian then picked a card, looked at the color and from that had to pick the right color of dough, flatten it and "print" the same letters in it according to what the card said. He knew some of he words like "fog" and "sun" but the longer ones were harder. He took educated guesses sometimes. The task wasn't to read anyway, it was simply to reproduce the words. He loved the activity and did it several times, eventually shaping the dough to represent the weather words. Cute, eh? By the way, this idea was not mine but Mari-Ann's, at Counting Coconuts.

 

Weather Nomenclature Cards - Literacy & Science

After browsing different sets of nomenclature cards, I finally decided to make my own. I can never seem to find "the perfect one"(not that mine is but at least, it was free! :) ). I decided to include the "basic" weather with sun, cloud, rain and such but also extended my set to include two phenomenons that happen when the weather does not cooperate (drought and flooding). My set totaled 15 cards and had labels as well. Adrian had no problem identifying the "easy" ones but of course, severe weather was a bit tougher. He's always lived in calm areas so hurricanes, tornadoes, sandstorms and the like are not easy to identify. To make some of these easier to understand, my friend YouTube joined us. We then witness a tornado, a hurricane and a sandstorm...because hopefully, we'll never have to in any other way. :)

Later that week, the cards were brought out again for a "classification" activity. For each card, we discussed whether the weather was calm or stormy, clear or cloudy, hot or cold, wet or dry. Of course, in some cases, it was a bit of both; I was just trying to get Adrian's brains working. Besides, he LOVES cards!

 

Thermometer Cards & Clothespins - Math & Fine Motor

Aren't these just the cutest cards? I saw these on Living Montessori Now. They were featured there from Leptir's blog. Couldn't resist getting a set for myself as I had nothing else with thermometers during weather week. I printed mine extra small from Making Learning Fun just so I could have Adrian use our tiniest clothespins. Yikes. Too small. It was SO challenging. Adrian was able to do about 3 cards before telling me it was too difficult. Getting these extra small clothespins to open is very hard but I wanted him to try and I'm proud he did. He read the thermometer gradings perfect too.

 

A cloud in a Glass - Science

Making a cloud in a jar or glass is nothing new - apparently. I had never done it before or heard of it before but the week leading to our Weather Week, I saw so many people posting pictures of their own clouds! It suddenly was everywhere. I personally saw it first (and liked the step-by-step instructions) on Teach Preschool. My goal was simply to show Adrian how the cloud (shaving cream pumped on a bed of water) would at first hold the food coloring drops (water droplets "evaporated from the land) and then release these droplets like a cloud would once too saturated. Needless to say, this experiment was a winner. Adrian loved being able to do the activity by himself, liked the beauty of it all...and the smells! :)

 

A heavy downpour! :)

After having asked for a bit more shaving cream, we had one big cumulonimbus. As such, we had torrential rain coming down...in different colors too! :)

Sorting Hail by Size - Math

Hmm. A bit bummed by this actually. I had planned on using these beads as raindrops with my umbrella toothpicks but you know what? The umbrella toothpicks were nowhere to be found. For those who've been following along now, I'm sure it comes as no surprise and you're probably laughing, knowing very well they'll turn up next week. Anyhow, I finally decided to have Adrian sort "hail" instead of count raindrops...umpf *sigh*

3D Weather Collage - Art

Including art is something I feel is necessary. "A" is just starting to like it more and now looks forward to our crafty projects so I try to "bring it". :) This week, I couldn't come up with anything super special or representative of weather in general so I thought we'd do a 3D collage. A piece of white construction paper was used for the background, a strip of blue was "torn" for the sky and one was cut for the grass (yay! scissors!). Adrian then made a yellow sun by tearing a piece of scrap construction paper, glued it and finally moved on to the stretching of cotton balls for some clouds. After these were glued, the pipe cleaners were aligned to make a rainbow. Which color comes first? He got them pretty much all right. Once they were in place, one thing was missing. "A rainbow and a sun, I said?" What else is present when we have these two in the sky? Sure enough, drops of blue glitter glue were dotted on the paper for the rain.

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Today, I'm happily linking up to

Montessori Monday, The Kids Co-Op, Show-and-Share Saturday, Link & Learn, TGIF, Share it Saturday, Mom's Library, The Sunday Showcase, Sun Scholars's For the Kids Friday, Stress-Free Sunday, Thursday Toddler & Preschool, Tuesday Tots, Preschool Corner &5K, Discover and Explore, and We Made That.

If you would like me to link up with you, please don't hesitate to ask, it might take me a week or two, but I generally do!