Weather Unit Books and Songs

Here is a list of some of the books and songs Baby Bear and I used during our weather unit as well as a few more activities we did.

Books

• Budgie and the Blizzard by H.R.H. The Duchess of York
• Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett
•  It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw
• Listen to the Rain by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault
• Little Cloud by Eric Carle
• Snowbots by Aaron Reynolds and David Barneda
• Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner
• The Snowy Day by Ezra jack Keats

Songs

• "Itsy Bitsy Spider"
• "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (Judy Garland clip from Wizard of Oz)
•  "Colors of the Wind" by Vanessa Williams
• "It's Raining, It's Pouring"
• "You Are My Sunshine" by Johnny Cash
• "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina & the Waves

Every day, we went outside with our weather wheel and made the spinner point to the type of weather we observed.

We created a rainy weather landscape using construction paper, a sunshine stamp, cottonballs, glitter glue, and silk flowers.

We also made a windsock out of construction paper. Baby Bear colored on one piece of paper, and I stapled it into a cylinder. Then, Baby Bear handed me the pieces of second piece of construction paper cut into strips, and I stapled them to the bottom of the cylinder. Finally, I hole-punched once on each side at the top and threaded some yarn through for a handle. This was Baby Bear's favorite activity, and he was positively radiant when Papa Bear lifted him to hang the windsock out on the porch.

Lastly, we played with some homemade snow (on the hottest day of the week!). Ice+blender=snow!

Rainbow Volcano

While talking about rainbows during our weather unit, Baby Bear and I had a little science fun. We did the traditional baking soda and vinegar experiment but with a little twist. I poured the vinegar into four different containers and added a drop of food coloring to each container. Then, I set out the colorful vinegars, a tray of baking soda, and an eye dropper in front of Baby Bear. I showed him how to use the dropper to transfer the vinegar to the baking soda tray so we could watch it bubble up in different colors. As he poured the vinegar little by little into the tray, the colors began to mix and make new colors. This gave us a chance to talk about how colors mix to make new colors (he was already somewhat familiar to this concept thanks to his Blues Clues DVD, so it wasn't over his head). He then took this idea and used it to start mixing the vinegar colors in their containers. He thought it was cool that he could make brown by adding red and green to the yellow container.

One thing that surprised me during this activity was how Baby Bear actually used the dropper the whole time to transfer the vinegar to the tray. He's definitely a pour-and-get-it-done-all-at-once efficient guy most of the time. This activity held his attention well enough that he actually enjoyed the slower pace and following a series of steps to accomplish a task. At the very end, I did let him pour the remains of the vinegar containers into the baking soda tray so we could watch one big reaction, though. We had to end with a bang!

Cloud Painting

Two of the books Baby Bear and I read while talking about weather were Little Cloud by Eric Carle and It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles Shaw. To go along with out cloud books, Baby Bear and I painted a cloud picture. We used white puffy paint (shaving cream+glue) and added some silver glitter as the rain being held in the cloud. Baby Bear added globs of the puffy paint to a piece of blue construction paper. As we played, we talked about what kinds of shapes the "clouds" looked like, just like in our books.

Baby Bear adding the glitter

Cheesin' it up!

Baby Bear's favorite thing to see in the clouds was spilt milk.

Rainstick

On one of the days we talked about rainy weather during our weather unit, Baby Bear and I made a rain stick during our art time. We used a paper towel roll, aluminum foil, dry rice, plastic toothpicks, duct tape, and decorative items.

I wrinkled the foil into a snake and poked the plastic toothpicks through it. This was meant to slow down the movement of the rice inside the paper towel roll. In retrospect, I think adding another foil snake and forgoing the toothpicks would have been easier and worked just as well.

I put duct tape over one end of the paper towel roll and placed the foil snake inside. Baby Bear added dry rice.

After I put duct tape on the other end, Baby Bear decided that the tape should cover the whole roll. So, we ended up with a penguin duct tape decorated rain stick. Baby Bear thought it was cool that when he turned the stick, it sounded like rain hitting the window.

I provided decorative items like foam stickers for Baby Bear to use on his rain stick. He added a few stickers and then decided that he liked it with just the penguins and took the stickers off. It was his rain stick, so who was I to argue. He likes his penguin rain stick. :)

Rainbow Music and Art

One weather occurrence Baby Bear and I talked about during our weather unit was rainbows. That is how "Over the Rainbow" got to be one of our songs for music time. On the day we talked about rainbows, Baby Bear and I combined our music and art times. Our take-home coloring sheet from the Barnes and Nobel story time was of a star and a rainbow... perfect for our weather unit! I pulled up the scene of Dorothy singing "Over the Rainbow" in The Wizard of Oz, and we watched it over and over again while we colored the picture together. Something that amazed me about this activity was that Baby Bear actually sat and colored the whole paper. He loved most forms of art, but coloring with crayons is not among his favorites, so sitting there as the song played through four times was an anomaly. This incident solidified in my mind that music and art go very well together. We will definitely be combining more activities in the future!

Rainy Day

Last week, Baby Bear and I finished up our home preschool unit on weather. We could not have asked for more cooperative weather during this unit! We were able to observe first-hand many of the types of weather we talked about. For example, on our very first day of the unit, I had planned to talk about rain, and it rained... all.. day... long! Besides just playing in the rain, we took our art and music activities outside as well! It was perfect!

Of course, we had to splash in puddles.

After playing in the puddles, we grabbed some chalk and drew a picture of a rain cloud.

Then, we drew a spider and a sun by the water spout and sang Itsy Bitsy spider over and over again.

We also observed how the rain affected the ground. I explained that the rain helped plants like trees and flowers grow. Baby Bear explained that rain made mud.

Baby Bear thought it was fun trying to catch rain drops in his mouth.

Before and during our rainy play time, we talked about how we might dress and what accessories we might use on a rainy day. I was sad that Baby Bear recently outgrew his rain boots... not like they would have kept his feet dry with all that puddle jumping anyway. :) Baby Bear thought the umbrella was more fun when used for catching rain than keeping it off him.

All in all, we had great fun learning about rainy weather through play and exploration!

Been delayed but will be back tomorrow!

We spent this past weekend and the beginning of this week battling croup, so once I'm done disinfecting my house from top to bottom, I will add a new post. Keep an eye out tomorrow!

By the way, he's MUCH better as of this afternoon. :)