Books
We could have found a number of books on rain, or sun, or snow; but I chose to round up a few books that discussed multiple weather conditions instead. Here is what I found, and they did go into quite a bit of detail. The great thing about each of these books though, is that you can read as much or as little on each page as you deem appropriate for your child. They have various text bubbles and blurbs that go into further detail, which you can just skip for young children. We're big fans of each of these authors for that reason.
Letter Recognition Activity
For today's letter recognition activity, I pulled out the kids' Lite Brite. Not wanting to waste the limited black sheets to slip in behind it, we simply created our design without, and allowed the extra light to shine through. The kids don't mind that kind of thing!
First it was Little M&M's turn. We talked about the sound the W makes, and how its shape goes "down, up, down, up." Which he knows is opposite of the letter M.
Here is the W he created (with a little help from me).
Then Honey Pot created a W as well.
Her's turned out a little smaller than ours, but still kept its proper shape.
Weather Craft
We actually stretched our weather theme into two days instead of one, and did two separate activities. First up, we created a simple thunderstorm art project. We were inspired by Buggy and Buddy's post here. I set them both up with a large piece of craft paper to share, and squeezed onto it some black and white paint. Instead of brushes, I had them use their hands for some sensory and finger painting fun. I asked them to guess what color black and white makes, and they guessed brown.
As they started mixing they saw the grey, were very surprised, and said its name.
I asked them to spread it around the whole page as best as they could. Note: I realized Little M&M needed a smock by this point...
Even when the page was filled up nicely, they kept swirling it around in their fingers. They enjoy this.
Finally, before the paper became to wet and close to tearing, they added some lightning bolts that I had cut out of construction paper. The wet paint acted as its own glue.
And in the end, this bit of process art became something awesome. They were each so proud of their thunderstorm, and it's hanging up in the hallway for them to continue to enjoy.
Tornado in a Jar - Science Experiment
On the following W day, we did a little science experiment. The two of them have been very interested in and curious about tornadoes recently. So we created our own tornado in a jar. Just fill a jar or bottle with water and a squeeze of dish soap. Then swirl it around in a circular motion and voila!
We did this over and over again. After a few times the jar would become cloudy, so we'd empty its contents and start over again. The results were pretty awesome!
They loved it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you enjoyed this, take a look at some of our weather-related posts of the past:
April Showers Theme, 2014 (one of our most popular posts!)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
