Weather or Not

In light of the recent ‘snowed inside days’ the twins and I have been talking about the weather. I have explaining the reasons why the weather has changed from letting us play outside to now finding lots of things to do inside. I have researched several ideas form other homeschooling moms and decided that combining many different elements would work best for how we learn.

Today was a great day to start our new weekly projects. The preschool Austin and Mallory attend was canceled due to -35 degree weather. It was a perfect day for explaining that even though the weather outside may look safe it wasn’t. The sun poked it’s face through the small gathering of clouds when it rose and then shown bright until noon.  However, even with the bright sunshine the wind chill was a force that would soon prove a challenge. Wind-chill to two-5 year olds was slow to grasp, in the end I think they understood better.

Our weather project for the day was a weather wheel. We talked about each of the four seasons and then broke them down into what kind of weather we would have in each season.

With being snowed in I didn’t have all the materials other moms recommended using. :) So when without, dig something else out.

Items we used and had on hand:

• 4 inexpensive paper plates – 2 plates per person.
• 2 twisty ties the kind that always come in the trash bags boxes – 1 per person
• Crayons or markers
• Foam letters (optional)

We chose 6 types of weather to go on our wheel.

·         Sunny

·         Clouds

·         Rainy

·         Snow

·         Foggy

·         Windy

Laying one of the plates eating side up divide into 6 pie shaped triangles with pencil.

 Taking second plate turn over and trace one triangle the same size as if you had divided the whole plate into 6 slices. Cut out and discard triangle piece.

Then have children label each weather type you’ve chose on each of the 6 triangles. Have them color a picture of what they see outside when the weather is the appointed one.

Fasten plates together by punching hole in middle of the two plates stacked together. Insert twisty tie and fold both ends so that the plates stay together but are able to move freely.

Have your child decorate the outside any way they choose. Project complete. This took us about an hour because we also worked on our letter recognition in finding the foam letters.

Now every morning you can change the weather together according to what your child sees. I plan to add a back that has drawings of what to wear in each weather type. I will be posting this next week. 

Kids had lots of fun sorting through the big pile of Foam Letters we have. They even helped each other and then it turned into a "Seek and Find" race for who could spell their word the fastest. Max our Jack Russell wanted only to take a nap in support of all our fun.