Weather Activities for Toddlers (week 1)

I wrote some time ago about how I am theming our months to bring a loose sort of structure to the things we do at home. This month we are doing weather.

I have had some activities to hand that I’ve pulled out as the children have got restless and wanted an activity to do. We have had a lot of fun during our first week so I thought I would share the resources and books that we have been using.

We started by reading the wonderful Sun and Summer books from Child’s Play. These are delightful books to read with young children as they will recognise themselves in these books (in the corresponding Snow book Mr D points to the children and calls them his and his sisters names). They are simple but we spent a good while reading them.

I talked to them about the sun and how it makes us feel on a sunny day, and the sorts of things we need to remember to do (Mr D remembered that we put on sun hats, sun cream and have ice in our drinks) and it was lovely to mime putting on sun hats and rubbing sun cream in – they both had fun doing this.

After we read we did some colouring in – we coloured in a sun picture which was a good opportunity to talk to Miss E about colours as well as a posted that tells us about ‘hot’ weather – Mr D liked this one as he was able to have a good talk to me about the things he could see. I also printed out an ‘S’ for them to colour (part of Mr D’s alphabet learning).

We then pinned the completed pictures up onto our notice boards and that was it for day one. They each have a board each and enjoyed seeing this fill up with their work from the week (including items made at playgroup). We then transfer this to the hallway wall when the board is full).

The following day Miss E had the rest of the weather books out so we read them, again doing some miming and role play for putting on our winter clothes and spring time (planting seeds).  We then went on to do some gluing and sticking to make a paper plate sun and a cotton wool cloud. They both enjoyed doing this and I’m going to continue this next week and make a raindrop with them (probably using glittery paint).

We have read the books a few times across the week and I’ve found Mr D reading them to himself and then coming to tell me about the book he was reading. I plan to do some pencil control activities with him next week as well as a little bit of initial work on the water cycle (I want him to equate the rain with the water that ends up in rivers).

We have also had a daily weather chart (printed from twinkl here) where we have talked about the weather and updated it each day. It’s been interesting to see how Mr D has interpreted the day’s weather!

As well as the above we have been talking about the weather (it has been very changeable!) Mr D has been pointing out the things he sees in his books (Spot on his holiday where it is sunny, Pip & Posy and snowy day). It’s been lovely seeing him make these connections.

I’ll write more about our next steps soon. You can follow my images and other updates on instagram here. I also have a Pinterest board with some of my weather ideas that I am adding to as I discover them