5 replies to this topic

[Beau]

I'm going to be doing a topic on the weather after Easter. (We get lots of it in Scotland - mostly bad :) ). If anyone has any ideas/suggestions of activities I would welcome them.

Beau

[Steve]

Beau -
If Helen mentions teddiy bears and freezers, be careful. It gave me nightmares!
Steve.

[Helen]

Teddy bears and freezers.......ah yes, I remember
Spray a teddy (or a number of teddies) with water, place in individual plastic bags (NOT in front of the children, or they may well have nightmares!!), and put in the freezer overnight. Remove from freezer and bag, and bring in teddy to show the children. Say he was left out all night in the cold, and he's frozen stiff....how can we warm him up?
We had lots of good ideas from the children; rubbing with a towel, using a hairdryer, getting a hot water bottle, giving him a warm drink, etc. It was a really good activity to talk about how we warm ourselves up, despite what Steve thinks..........anyway, it wasn't his teddy.

[jemma_louise]

Beau, on Apr 9 2003, 03:32 PM, said:

I'm going to be doing a topic on the weather after Easter. (We get lots of it in Scotland - mostly bad :) ). If anyone has any ideas/suggestions of activities I would welcome them.

Beau

My little sister is in primary school and recently she came home after doing an activity about the weather, they made a weather chart, using paper card and a split pin, The drew differnt types of weather for example sunny and then they had to chane thjeir chart each morning as they came in, at circle time they disscussed how the different weather made them feel and what it made them want to do ie sunny, warm, lets go to the beach, She loved doing this!

[Catherine]

Recently during free-painting we asked the children what would happen to their paintings if we put it outside in the rain !

One of the children offered to put his picture outside.We left it out in the rain and watched through the window as it got wet.

The children were fascinated, and pleased as some of them guessed right.

A similar idea is to have the children put dry paint powder onto a paper plate or piece of paper and then put this outside when it is raining. (try and find a place thats not too windy.)

The language for thinking opportunities are endless.

[LJW]

Hello! We also have a lot of weather in Shropshire, generally the wet kind - you may have seen our floods on the news last week.

Why does it never snow when you're doing a topic on Winter or weather?!

Another successful idea for trying to get across the idea of freezing weather, snow etc is to make ice balloons. Cram the end of a balloon over the end of a tap and gently turn on the tap until the balloon is reasonably full. PLEASE KEEP A FIRM GRIP ON THE TAP AND BALLOON UNLESS YOU WANT WET SOCKS! (If you want a coloured ice balloon put the food colouring in first). Then freeze overnight. Add this to the water tray when you are ready, showing the children what is inside the balloon as usually too hard for the children to do themselves (great for prediction and awe & wonder). Firstly have just cold water in the tray and supply watering cans, cups etc for the children to tip and pour over the ice balloon. Then, as a more adult directed activity or keyworker activity supply jugs of warm water to pour over and just listen to the children's language, vocab and thought processes! I never fail to be amazed. We just did this activity with an ofsted inspector watching! My keyworker group were brill and demonstrated fantastically their abilities at problem solving and prediction, and also made the connection with the gritter they had seen salting the road the previous day!
Another tip - make several balloons at one time as my children wanted to return to this activity time and time again (consolidation of learning and sheer pleasure!)
Have fun!