Weather Theme

By Betsy

This week for Tator Tots, we learned about and explored 'weather'. We wanted our tots to walk away with some basic vocabulary words like sun, rain, and clouds. Our morning started out with free play, and after several minutes of our two-year-olds begging us to go upstairs, we moved into story time. Generally, one of us reads a theme-related book to the kids; however, this week we switched things up. Each mom spent one-on-one time with her child and a book that we picked up at the library. Each book had several pictures, and the list of books from the library is listed below. The goal was to point out different weather-related vocabulary words. An example of what you may have heard had you been listening in would be "Do you see the snow? The snow is cold. Brrrr. That's the sun. The sun is in the sky." Pretty exciting stuff, huh?

Library Books:

How Do You Know It's Summer?-Alan Fowler

What Do you See in a Cloud?-Alan Fowler

Can It Rain Cats and Dogs?: Questions and Answers about Weather-Melvin and Gilda Berger

Weather-Kingfisher Readers, Level 4

Weather-Caroline Harris

Weather-Discover Science

It's Raining!-Gail Gibbons

Catty Jane Who Hated the Rain- Valeri Gorbachev

During story time, the kids also enjoyed a rainbow fruit-kabob for a snack. 

You can add pineapple for yellow to get all of the colors of the rainbow. 

Next, we attempted music time and every kid got an instrument. Egg shakers, maracas, bells, and drums seem to be easy for the kids to use. We had originally planned for two weather-related songs but ended up singing just one, The Itsy Bitsy Spider.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

The itsy bitsy spider

Went up the water spout. 

Down came the rain

And washed the spider out. 

Out came the sun 

And dried up all the rain.

And the itsy bitsy spider 

Climbed up the spout again.

What's the Weather (Sung to Frere Jacques)

What's the weather? What's the weather? 

On this (name day). On this (name day). 

Let's look out the window. Let's look out the window.

It is (name weather-ie rainy). It is (--). 

Craft time was next, and we made weather charts so that the kids identify the weather outside over the next week or so. This was a pretty basic, easy craft, and you probably already have all of the materials at home. 

What you need:

Clothes pin

Glue

Yellow crayon

Construction paper

Cotton Balls

Scissors

Marker

Snowflake stamp (you can draw snowflakes if you do not have a stamp)

Glue the arrow onto the clothes pin, and after your tot identifies the weather outside, help them move the arrow to the corresponding picture. 

During craft time, we played "thunderstorm music" in the background. We used this YouTube video, but there are tons of options.

After the craft, we went outside for some more weather-related play. The tots had the option to play with a weather-related sensory bin or "cloud dough." #clouddoughFTW

In the weather bin, there was:

Blue rocks (sky)

Light blue rocks (water)

Clear rocks (ice)

Cotton Balls (clouds)

Yellow Pipe Cleaners (shaped into lightening bulbs)

Suns (made from construction paper and glued onto Popsicle sticks)

Spray bottle filled with water (to make rain)

A few kitchen tools to use as scoops

Cloud Dough

8 cups flour

1 cup baby oil

Mix together

The cloud dough is easy to wipe off your kiddos, but I would definitely recommend that this be an outdoor activity!