Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun, please shine down on me. Rain, rain go away come again another day. It’s raining, it’s pouring, the Old Man is snoring….there are several nursery rhymes and jingles about the weather. Weather is a conversation point in most grocery store line-ups. And the weather is just interesting to talk about. So learning about the weather in Kindergarten and first grade can be really fascinating for little learners. There are some awesome weather science experiments and weather activities for kindergarten.

What is the weather?

As the Oxford Dictionary defines, ‘weather’ is “the state of the atmosphere at a place and time as regards heat, dryness, sunshine, wind, rain, etc.” But in more kid-friendly terms, ‘weather’ is how the air is feeling right now! Is it raining? Cloudy? Snowy? Sunny? Weather also includes temperature. Is it hot? Cold?

The Easy Way to Teach Weather & Seasons

Looking for an all-in-one unit to teach weather and seasons to little learners? In just a few clicks you can grab all the pieces you need: lesson plans, vocabulary cards, hands-on activities, printable worksheets, and more!

buy it now

Weather Videos for Kids

• If you’re a fan of Blippi, here’s a video where Blippi explores the topic of Weather.

• This is a simple video to help teach weather vocabulary.

• This video is a compilation of some Weather Songs that your little learners might love.

Reading About the Weather

Reading about the weather is a great place to start. For little learners, these reading passages are best used as a teacher-led activity. There are two options for reading: a simple page version or a student mini-book, depending on your preference of format. 

I suggest creating a word wall before reading the passage. Use the Word Wall Cards to help students learn the weather vocabulary. You can then use the cards as a hands-on vocabulary puzzle of center activity where students match the word and picture together. If your students can’t read yet, they can just use the pictures and verbally explain what the picture represents. 

Chart the weather

Charting the weather can be a great whole-group weather activity for Kindergarten. Gather students together on the carpet and make observations about the weather outside. Then complete the pocket chart weather information (include a picture of the pocket chart from the unit here?). Where possible, try to use precise scientific vocabulary like Celsius and precipitation. Not only will this help students in their learning, but it helps them feel empowered because they learned the meanings of tricky words. If you’re not quite sure what this lesson might look like, check out this unit for a sample lesson and a detailed lesson plan.

Once you’ve completed the group charting, have students move to their independent weather journals.

Keep a Weather Journal

This weather journal is available as a part of the Weather and Seasons Unit for Little Learners.

A Weather Journal is a great way of keeping track of weather and weather patterns. Plus, Weather Journals are a great way to combine science and writing skills. This Weather Journal (link to it) allows students to copy and fill in information from the group charting. 

SciShow Kids is a personal favorite of mine. This video talks about keeping a weather journal and might be a perfect way to introduce how to write a weather journal!

Explore the Weather Far Away

Use a computer to research what the weather is like in another area of the world. Maybe one of your students has family members living on the other side of the world. How fun would it be for your students to learn about the weather in that country? Talk about how it might differ from where you are. 

Shaving Cream Clouds

When learning about clouds and rain, this activity is a perfect weather experiment for little learners. Shaving cream rain clouds will be a highlight activity for your students. One Little Project has a great description (and video!) of how to complete this activity!

Homemade Rain Guage

Weather involved tools for collecting data and predicting patterns. Check out this simple rain guage activity you can do with your students.

There are plenty of weather experiments and weather activities out there. Do you have any favorites? Feel free to comment about your ideas below! 

Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring….these are the seasons of the year! Even just typing this phrase gets songs running through my mind for teaching kids the season.  It’s such a simple concept, yet this needs to be taught to our students. And there are some fabulous activities for teaching seasons in kindergarten and first grade. 

What is a season in simple words?

There are changes in the weather throughout the year. These weather changes are divided into four seasons: summer, fall, winter, and spring. Each season has unique weather depending on where you live.

How do you teach seasons in Kindergarten?

When teaching seasons in kindergarten, keep the lessons simple, engaging, and interactive. Also, repetition, repetition, repetition. Maybe you can find a way to incorporate seasons into your Calendar routine by singing a song and discussing what seasons it is currently. Maybe you can find ways to teach seasons in Math or Literacy circles by reading a story about the seasons and answering questions bout seasons. Whatever works best for your classroom, a few minutes routinely throughout the week can be a great way to help the concept of seasons get ingrained into your students. 

The Easy Way to Teach Weather & Seasons

Looking for an all-in-one unit to teach weather and seasons to little learners? In just a few clicks you can grab all the pieces you need: lesson plans, vocabulary cards, hands-on activities, printable worksheets, and more!

see the unit

videos about seasons for kids

Songs are the perfect learning tool in early elementary. Here are some YouTube videos with songs all about the seasons for Little Learners. 

• Seasons Song - this is a simple song that young learners enjoy. Be careful though…it might get stuck in your head too!

• Here’s another fun season song you could incorporate into your routine. 

For some more educational videos about seasons that aren’t songs, you might want to check out these videos.

• This is a snippet from Elmo’s World. This keeps the language of seasons simple without going into depth about the tilt of the earth and hemispheres. 

• This video does a good job of explaining that seasons are different depending on where you live. Parts of this video definitely go into more depth than you’ll need to teach, but maybe your students will enjoy these more advanced parts.

• SciShow Kids is a go-to youtube video for me! Here’s a great video about why there are seasons. This video (embedded in the link below) also goes into more depth than you probably need to teach, but your students might still find this interesting!

Reading about Seasons and Using Vocabulary

Have you thought about integrating literacy and science? Grab these short non-fiction readers about weather and seasons. These are available in single-page format or as student mini-books. You will likely have to help with reading these passages, depending on the reading level of your students, but they can follow along, underline key vocabulary words, and color the pictures in the mini-readers. 

There are also vocabulary cards to display in your classroom as students learn each vocabulary word. Or these cards can be used as hands-on vocabulary puzzles. Simply cut out each word and picture. Then ask students to match them together. For students who cannot read, try using the pictures alone as a center activity where students verbally explain what the picture represents.

Teach that Seasons are a Cycle (or a Pattern)

“Seasons Are a Cycle” anchor chart. Make sure the season descriptions match where you live. Try printing photos and gluing them to the chart!

Young kids love learning about patterns. They take joy in making patterns with manipulatives and finding patterns in their environment. So I imagine they would find delight in realizing that seasons are a pattern as well (although “cycle” is the more technical science word). Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, repeat, repeat, repeat! It’s a pattern!

Help Students to Understand local seasons

Another important aspect of teaching seasons is to help students understand the seasons where THEY are! I live on the West Coast of British Columbia, so I experience seasons radically differently than my followers in Australia. So take time to explore what each season feels like to your own students. Winter won’t have snow for everyone. Fall might not have falling leaves for everyone.

Teaching seasons to little learners doesn’t have to be complicated. There are some simple activities to do to teach seasons that are meaningful and easy to prepare!

“It’s raining cats and dogs,” “Mr. Sun, Mr. Sun”, “Down came the rain and washed the spider out…”, “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.” The phrases about weather are endless. Kids know songs about the weather. There are stories about the weather. There are popular phrases about the weather. Weather is all around us. And it’s part of the curriculum! Take a look at some of the MOST fun (and educational!) third grade weather and climate activities. 

What is the difference between weather and climate?

Weather vs. Climate anchor chart.

Weather is a specific event, like a thunderstorm, rain or snow. Weather might last a short time, like a short rainfall, or it might last longer like a snowstorm that lasts for six days. Climate is the average of all the weather that happens in a place over the past 30 or more years. Climate describes what the weather is normally like in a region. So now that we know the difference between climate and weather, let’s look at some fun 3rd grade weather and climate activities.

We use an anchor chart like the one pictured to help kids really visualize the differences between weather and climate.

track the weather near and far

Tracking daily weather is a great (and quick!) activity to draw attention to daily weather patterns. This activity doesn’t need to take more than 5-10 minutes, and can be used for math tie-ins later down the road. Once you’ve gathered data on weather and temperature patterns for a number of weeks it’s a great chance to tie in some graphing and data outcomes!

Tracking the weather in two distinct locations is a fun and simple way to gather data and make great scientific observations about weather patterns!

We use a simple notebook journal to record the weather, temperature, and precipitation of our city.

To take this activity to the next level, use the same notebook to compare weather with a far away location. Weather apps are great for this! Have students make notes on the differences that they are seeing. We live in the west coast of Canada, and chose to follow a the weather in a city in Australia. It was so interesting to watch students research the warm daily weather in Australia during our rainy and cold season.

What is the average temperature in our location compared to the far away destination? Do we think their climate is similar to ours or different? , students can even compare and contrast the weather from a far away location to the weather at their school.

Shaving Cream Rain Clouds

Did you know that you can make it rain in a jar and you only need a few materials? Get a glass jar, shaving cream and food coloring. Fill the glass jar with water and put shaving cream on the top. The shaving cream represents the cloud. Then start dripping food coloring on top of the shaving cream. Explain to your students that when the cloud is heavy enough, it will start to rain. Sure enough, when you have put enough food coloring drops on the cloud, it will start to rain.

Pro Tip: Dilute the food coloring with water, otherwise you’ll go through a lot of food coloring drops.

Combine close reading and a travel brochure project

One of my favorite ways to teach about weather and climate is to combine the weather and climate with paired close reading passages. When we dive into informational text it really gives students the background knowledge (and vocabulary!) to be able to interact with the hands-on materials in a new way. 

In this unit, we looked at informational texts about Weather and Climate and then dug into a set of paired passages about the weather and climate in two very different locations in the world: Rio de Janeiro and Moscow!

Then, students were asked to imagine that they have been hired by “Terrific Travels”, a fictitious travel agency. In a project-based learning activity, they were tasked with designing a travel brochure for a terrific destination, and needed to include information about the climate and weather! It was a great way to have students show their understanding of climate and weather in a way that wasn’t just worksheets. (Plus, it was so easy to prepare!)

Plan Your Weather and Climate Lessons With One Click

Looking for a FAST way to plan out your weather and climate unit that already includes paired nonfiction passages and this project based learning travel brochure? In just a few clicks you can grab all of the pieces you need: lesson plans, paired passages, reading comprehension, key reading skills, and a hands-on science extension. Click and print. Planning is really that easy.

shop now

Zip Bag Water Cycle

We learn all about the water cycle in 2nd grade up here in BC, but it fits in so nicely when teaching about weather and climate as well! With just a few household ingredients you can help to quickly explain the water cycle to your students.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• A plastic zippered bag

• Food coloring

• Tape

First, pour some water into the bag. It should be enough to cover the bottom of the bag by ½ inch to an inch. Add a few drops of food coloring so students can see the water better. Blue is preferable to best represent water, but any color works! Close the bag and tape it to a window or a wall facing a window.

As the water warms, it will start to evaporate. But the water vapor won’t be able to escape the bag because the bag is sealed. The water vapor gets trapped at the top of the back and eventually starts to cool. As it cools, it condenses like a cloud. When it condenses enough, it falls down like rain. While this isn’t a perfect illustration, it gives the students a great sense of the water cycle and how clouds and rain form. 

Bill Nye Explains Climates

Were you a huge fan of Bill Nye the Science Guy when you were a kid? I sure was! I loved watching Bill Nye do experiments and explain science in fun ways. Well, I stumbled across this episode of Bill Nye all about Climates! Check it out:

Climate and weather are literally all around us. Let’s commit to teaching them with excellence so our students have a solid understanding of climate and weather.

---

Want to try an integrated reading and science lesson for free? ‘Building Bridges’ is an integrated reading and science lesson that covers NGSS standards all about the Engineering and Design process. It includes paired passages about famous bridges, reading comprehension, and a STEM extension. Sign up and try it out for free today.