One Year with Kipper - Seasons, weather
This book looks at the seasons and weather through the eyes of Kipper the dog. This provides a nice link into work on seasonal change as children work to observe changes across the four seasons and observe and describe the weather associated with the seasons and how day length varies. It is worth mentioning that although we think of the summer as being hot and sunny, there are still rainy cold days and there may also be sunny days in the winter!
A lovely non-fiction text which links to this topic is The Wild Weather Book by Fiona Danks and Jo Schofield. Although this book is partly aimed at adults and aims to give lots of ideas for getting outside with children it is well illustrated with photographs on every page and will certainly be enjoyed by children and will inspire them to get outside whatever the weather.
Alfie Weather by Shirley Hughes is another book that will spark conversation with children
The Woodland Trust Nature Detectives
The Nature Detectives website has a myriad of ideas linked to all four seasons to encourage children to get outside and to use their time to do exciting things. Many of the ideas, such as making decorations from ice are very similar to the ones in The Wild Weather Book. Why not ask your children to explore the site at home with their parents? Maybe some of them will be encouraged to go out and do something exciting with their child!
Grow Sunflowers, Make Plant Pots *suitable for home teaching*
If you are planning or growing sunflowers with your class be sure to plan ahead to get the most learning from the activity. To start with make sure that as well as letting each child plant their own seed you have a few spares up your sleeve so that you are prepared when some of the seeds don't germinate!
Decide in advance what you are going to do once the seedlings need planting outside. Are you going to plant them in the school grounds? You will need somewhere where you can stake the plants so that they do not get blown over in the wind. However, if you send them home you may never see, or hear about them again! To maximise learning once at home why not explain to parents that this is their maths homework for the rest of the term? Encourage them to come into school regularly with their child to fill in a graph to show how tall their sunflower has grown. If you have a wall to large enough to display a graph which is actual size you will be able to see the sunflowers almost growing up your wall! This is bound to spark plenty of conversation between parents about why some plants are taller than others.
Ask for photographs, drawings and written reports of the sunflowers' progress to add to your display.
Seasonal Changes
This is a template for children to cut out and make a wheel which they can turn to show how the seasons follow each other in a cycle. It also shows some of the changes, such as day length, that occur as a result of these changes.
Chidlren would enjoy making this, however it does not allow much scope for their own creativity or to apply their knowledge for themselves. Once they understand how it works perhaps they could work with a blank template to design one of their own. They could either use pictures taken in the school grounds over the course of a year, or pictures that they have drawn, to show the changing seasons.
Weather and Seasons Word Mats
These attractive and colourful word mats could be a useful prop to encourage children's independent writing.
Children often produce their best writing when they have been inspired by exciting science contexts but are then supported, during an English lesson, to meet their literacy targets. These word mats would support such an approach.
Children Dressed for the Seasons Posters
These posters, which show children dressed for different types of weather, could be displayed on an interactive white board to spark a discussion about what we wear at different types of year. To help children think about this more, how about providing children with a class mascot and a supply of clothes suitable for different weather conditions? Children can then dress it for the prevailing weather conditions as part of the welcome routine and discussion each day.
Weather Picture Cards
There are several pictures which show some different weather such as 'warm and cloudy' or 'cold and rainy'; they are accompanied by a picture which shows the weather and somebody outside in it. For example, the person who is outside when it is 'cold and windy' is flying a kite. These could be shown on an interactive white board. Children could be encouraged to think of as wide a range of adjectives as possible to improve the descriptions. Is it windy, for example, or breezy? or blustery? or maybe is it blowing a gale?
There is also a blank template for children to make their own. This would be best done after children have been outside and experienced the weather first hand; encourage them to use as many exciting words as possible to describe what they have experienced.
Weather
This resource will help children to see how it important it can be to be able to talk about and predict the weather. It highlights the effects of the weather on different types of aviation including commercial airliners, balloons and hang gliders. It also encourages a more descriptive use of language beyond merely 'rainy', 'windy' or 'hot'.
The resource also gives ideas for measuring the weather. Perhaps children could keep a record of their local weather and then 'send' it to Aviation Heritage so that they can use the information to compare with the weather at the local aerodrome?
Season song
Here is a jolly song to help children remember how the weather changes over the seasons.