Winter Weather

I hope everyone enjoyed the second winter break that we got this week!

Before we left school last week we did some "weather" centers. They sure got us prepared for the big snow storm that was to come! We split into 3 groups and took turns rotating through 4 centers.

At one center, we did weather mats. Each child had a mat that showed a certain kind of weather. Then the children had to choose what kinds of activities went with that weather. For example, flying a kite goes with windy weather and building a snowman goes with snowy weather.

The next center that the children went to was making a weather graph. I gave the children a calendar with weather from the past two weeks. Then they used weather tags to make a graph showing the weather. After they were finished I asked them several questions about the graph including "Which weather was the most?" and "Which weather was the least" and my favorite "How do you know?". We have been working on this together as a class each morning and I was excited to see how they were able to do it themselves!

The next center was an activity on the smartboard. There were two children in their undies and the children had to look at the background and use clues (like snow or sand) to decide what season it was and then they had to use clothes to dress up the children like the should dress for that season. This is something important because I want the children to learn what types of clothes are appropriate for what weather. I have some who never want to wear a coat and I want them to understand when and why this is necessary!

The last center was called Weather Sort. I brought in a huge bag of clothes and asked the children to sort them and then tell me how they sorted them. Most of the groups sorted them into winter clothes and summer clothes. After they sorted, I asked them to explain and asked why those types of clothes were appropriate for that center. One group decided to dress up so I asked them what season they were dressed for and then I asked them to show me how they would dress for winter or summer. It was a really fun center!

These weather centers helped the children to think about the kinds of weather that we have and I was actually glad the winter storm came through because a lot of times this is weather that the children may not understand because they are not exposed to it!