It's a wonderful day to talk about WEATHER

During the last preschool teacher workshop, we all played a lesson planning game.  Similar to the television show, "Chopped", each group of teachers was presented with a bag of "mystery" materials, an art reproduction and a theme. The teachers were handed their challenge: come up with creative ideas for what you can DO and what you can MAKE with preschool students, combining the art reproduction and the theme. The main focus of this activity was to investigate how art can be incorporated into everyday classroom activities.

One group of teachers came up with an entire day of activities that revolved around Charles Burchfield's Spring Thunderstorm, 1955. The painting is an expressionistic landscape, made with watercolors.  It shows the flowing curves of storm clouds, the straight lines of rain and the varying colors of nature. Below is an example of how this artwork could be used to explore weather in your preschool classroom.
 

 

Charles Burchfield, Spring Thunderstorm, 1955. 

To start the day, the class meeting would include visually exploring the stormy landscape. Teachers would ask the students to look carefully at the artwork and determine "what's going on in this picture?".  Many students have probably experienced the rainy qualities of spring and would be able to talk about their own interactions with the temperature of spring, feel of rain, sound of thunder, and what a windy day looks like.

During free choice periods, each area could be set up to include an exploratory activity that has the students learning about weather.  The art area could be supplied with watercolor paints so that the students could create their own seasonal or weather related landscape, picking colors that might indicate the temperature or precipitation.  Rain gauges, thermometers, and flower bulbs could be examined and used by the students in the science area.  Selecting seasonal clothing such as rain boots, hats, scarves and sunglasses for the dramatic play area would allow students to demonstrate how weather affects their lives.  The sensory table could include snow, water, sand or leaves, depending on the current season.  In the block area, students could duplicate the scenes of "The Three Little Pigs" and create buildings for different types of weather with varying materials.  Including a fan in this area could add to the activity if students were directed to turn the fan on and see which building material would survive the different "wind" speeds of the fan.  

"Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" by Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett is a childhood favorite and is one of many stories about weather that could be read during a day to explore weather.  Depending on the weather, taking the students outside to use a parachute would be a great way to integrate the weather theme into gross motor play.  

How might you incorporate this artwork or another into your daily activities?  What games might you create or adapt to go along with the theme of weather?