Monday, April 8, 2013

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 Spelling 
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 Cards Nomenclature 
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 
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.

Shaving Cream Cloud in Glass 
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! :)

Cloud in the making 
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
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 Preschool
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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Your comments make my day ! 

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Today, I'm happily linking up to


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!

26 comments:

  1. What a fantastic collection of weather ideas!! Pinning to my "Weather" board! :)

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    1. Thanks Tanya! It took me a while to actually come up with ideas for this theme believe it or not but in the end, I felt happy with the results! :)

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  2. What a great unit! I really love the playdoh -- pinning that!

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    1. Looks great, doesn't it? Wasn't my idea though so can't take much credit. LOL Adrian did shape the playdough into weather words though so I guess he did make the idea his somehow! :)

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  3. We are doing weather this month as well. Thanks for sharing your activities. I'm going to print and add the penguin thermometers to our shelves.

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    1. It's a great addition. There was a wide range of numbers as well and by printing on a different scale, you get to use different sizes of clothespins so that activity is definitely awesome! :)

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  4. I really like the art! Thanks for sharing at Mom's Libraary! Pinning it!

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    1. Thank you Debbie! It was a fun collage to make for Adrian. Easy enough, fast enough too to keep his interest.

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  5. Lots of great weather exploration activities! Thanks for sharing!

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    1. Glad you found something that caught your eye! :) Come back anytime!

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  6. This is the first time I've found your blog and I love it! Started following you : my daughter is the same age as your eldest! I love the art!

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    1. Thank you! Glad you found me and that you'll get to follow along! Welcome aboard! :)

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  7. What a great unit!! I have pinned this to do with my daughter when we have our weather week! Thank you so much for sharing!! :)

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    1. You're welcome! Glad to see you dropping by and leaving with some ideas to work with! :)

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  8. I love these cute little weather unit. I would like to invite you to link up this post to my Money Saving Monday Link Up.

    Thank You,
    Stephanie
    http://lifesallaboutlittleadventures.blogspot.com/2013/04/money-saving-monday-week-2.html

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    1. Thank you for taking the time to comment Stephanie. I'll definitely check out your linky and blog! Thanks for stopping by!

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  9. What a fun, playful study! You did lots of great activities. I like the rainbow pipe cleaners =)

    I featured this on TGIF this week - http://www.123homeschool4me.com/2013/04/tgif-linky-party-73.html

    Hope to see you linked up again this wee! Have a great weekend,
    Beth =)

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    1. Thank you Beth! It's always nice to get great feedback! Featured again on TGIF? Unbelievable! Thank you so much! There's always such a great array of links to click on too! Very flattering indeed to be featured again. :) Definitely made my day! :)

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  10. I love your ideas! I am featuring your post tomorrow on Share It Saturday. thanks so much for linking up!

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    1. Thank you so much for letting us link up with you Karyn...and for the feature of course! :) It's always an honor to be featured. So many people link up each week and I always leave with a pack of ideas to try at home!

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  11. I love all of the weather-related ideas you have here! My son is really into weather right now, so I think I'm going to use some of your activities in May. Thanks so much for sharing at Stress-Free Sunday with Fun-A-Day!. Looking forward to seeing what you have going on this week. :)

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    1. Feel free to use any of the ideas you find here. Our weather week was a lot of fun and I think we'll do another one next year. Hopefully we'll get more range of weather this time and get to try new things as well! Thanks for letting me link up with you every week! :)

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  12. I love your weather cards! Are you sharing those? I am writing pre-K camps for my job, non-profit science center and my current theme is planes and trains and we are going to discuss how important weather is flight. I saw your cards and liked them better than anyone elses.

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    1. Thank you Megan. I'm happy to hear you like my weather cards. I couldn't find a set I loved so I created my own. I haven't shared it with anyone so far for a few reasons; first, because the cards are not all of the same size and when my work is not perfect, I tend not to offer it. :) Second, some of the pictures have copyrights (actually, I'm sure they all do but some have the logo and all on it) so I can't technically distribute them I think. I wouldn't know how to set up a sharing thing online anyway. I guess I could send them by e-mail but since this is for classroom use and not personal use, I don't even think I'd be allowed to share them in this case...

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  13. Hey, i'm a french housewife, i don't speak english very well but i like your job so much. There is no job like this here. can you send me this nomenclature and the nomenclature of clouds please, please please..
    Very merci !

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  14. Bonjour! Malheureusement, je ne sais pas si je peux "distribuer" ces cartes météorologiques ou celle des nuages. Bien que je les ai fabriquées moi-meme avec des photos trouvées sur internet, certaines photos (la plupart possiblement) sont protégées par des droits d'auteurs et j'ose imaginer qu'en les envoyant a d'autres personnes, ces droits seraient bafoués. Je n'ai pas, de toutes façons, votre courriel pour vous rejoindre. Toutes mes excuses. Sois dis en passant...votre anglais est magnifique! :)

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