Make Weather Learning Fun with a Downloadable Weather Chart for Preschool Classroom
It’s especially useful when teaching basic concepts to preschool children. Arguably, making something concrete and tangible is one of the best approaches to teaching complex concepts that would otherwise be ephemeral and hard to grasp for a young mind. So, a downloadable weather chart for preschool classroom isn’t just an alternative to decorating a wall with simply ‘cute’ designs.
Why a Weather Chart is Essential in a Preschool Classroom
Weather charts have nothing to do with the actual weather: are the clouds sunny and fluffy today or grey and rainy? While some charts will indeed use the real weather to make predictions, the bigger benefits, for preschool and kindergarten students, are practising their observational skills and learning the days of the week. When you download your printable weather chart for preschool classroom you are supplying your students with an opportunity to link in with the environment in a concrete way, on a daily basis.
Educational Benefits of Using a Weather Chart
Kids love routines, and what could be better than to check the weather? This links learning to everyday life when children begin to see patterns, such as which types of weather are more likely at certain times of year, and which types mark the beginning or end of specific days and weeks. It also introduces them to tracking time – days, weeks and months – again, all linked to something they do every day.
Promoting Discussion and Observation
A weather chart does not ask: ‘Children, tell me if it is snowing right now.’ It does instead ask: ‘Go outside, look up at the sky, make an observation, and then bring that observation with you to share.’ In turn, those conversations might lead to: ‘Oh, so it is snowing. I wonder why it is snowing today. What clouds look like before it snows? Why do I feel hot when the sun is out?’ Those conversations are where the meaningful learning is.
Features to Look for in a Downloadable Weather Chart
It is useful to preview a downloadable weather chart for preschool classroom before you decide to pick one. However, many of these space-themed weather charts are not exactly what educators need or can use in the classroom. Here is what we mean by that.
Key Elements of a Weather Chart
A wobbly line for each day of the week, with an icon for whether the weather was sunny, rainy, cloudy or some other combination, and a number to represent the temperature, was the minimum any good weather chart had to contain. But the best ones would go on to incorporate picture boxes asking children to describe what they were wearing underneath: helping to link weather with clothing choices; or a space to describe how they felt about the weather: an exercise that both helped anchor the weather narrative, and served to provide a conduit for self-expression.
Visual Engagement
After all, if the chart doesn’t look fun, it won’t be worth looking at for a preschooler. Bright colours, big pictures and cool fonts are a must. However, for the chart to be useful as well as attractive, it should be easy enough for kids to use by themselves – so look for charts that include simple icons or cursive-style letters.
Durability and Ease of Use
Although downloadable weather charts bring the advantage that you can print them out when needed, you can also laminate the printed chart or use magnetic boards on it so that it becomes more interactive and has more life – the kids can be more involved and move the pieces themselves.
Types of Weather Charts Available for Download
There’s no shortage of downloadable, project-able weather charts to add to the wall of your preschool classroom, but how can you be sure you’ve chosen the right one?
Wall Charts vs. Flip Charts vs. Magnetic Boards
Wall charts are the most common – they are big, visible and great for groups. Flip charts lend themselves to flipping from day to day, which can be good when presenting long-term weather information, and also you can add another type of tactile sense to them, which certain kids like. Magnetic boards can allow children to move the weather symbols around, pushing and stretching them across the board, learning through a very interactive experience.
Printable PDFs and Editable Templates
The feature of downloadable weather charts is that you can get them in different file formats. If you need an easy and ready to print file, it is wise to go for the ones with PDF extension. If you need to make customisations, editable files are the ones you are looking for — insert your own touches: maybe the children’s names in your class or weather condition names that are relevant to your area.
Adaptability for Different Classroom Needs
An important consideration is that they are all different. The size of your classroom will affect the size of your weather chart. Some downloads belong in an assembly hall, others a cosier home learning environment. Some might even permit seasonal updates so that your content always feels new.
How to Use a Weather Chart in the Classroom
So, you’ve finally made up your mind and download one of our free weather chart for kindergarten classroom, but how are you going to utilise it? It’s not just that you’ll stick it on the wall and hope the students would be interested. We’ll share with you how to do it.
Incorporating the Weather Chart into Daily Routine
Each day the children begin with the weather chart. Each day appoint one student to be a ‘weather watcher’. The weather watcher wants to make some observations of the weather outside, go back inside, and record the information. You can make this a special part of the day and a special job for the weather watcher. After a while, it will become a favourite few minutes of the day.
Making the Activity Interactive
In order to avoid making the weather chart an obligatory part of classroom routine, be sure to ask questions about today’s weather, such as: ‘What do you think it will be like tomorrow?’; ‘Do you think it’s the same as yesterday?’; ‘How did it differ from yesterday / tomorrow?’ Make sure you also connect the weather chart to other classroom activities that are more child-centred, such as drawing a picture, dancing, eating biscuits, or reading a book related to the weather to familiarise yourself with different weather conditions.
Keeping It Engaging and Educational
A trick, perhaps, for making this weather chart a good educational tool and ensuring it isn’t abandoned to just sit there, is to rotate roles – one kid updates the weather, another the day of the week, and another the temperature – and use it as an access point to extend a science lesson, such as why it rains or the physics of rainbows.
Where to Find the Best Downloadable Weather Charts
You’re sold – it seems like what you need is a weather chart for preschool download – but where to look for the best kind?
Reliable Sources for Downloading Weather Charts
You can find plenty of weather charts online that you can download. Some of these are free, while others charge a bit, or even a lot more, for more memory, detailed data or prettier, fancier weather charts with higher quality and resolution. Many can be used without additional enhancements, but others go further and offer lesson plans, seasonal updates and more. For example, you can get pretty detailed and attractive charts and lessons if you visit the websites Twinkl, Education.com or Teachers Pay Teachers.
Free vs. Paid Options
Free resources are good, particularly if you’re working on a tight budget. But don’t rule out paid tools, many of which provide extra features – such as editable templates – that can save you time and allow for greater customisation.
Customisation to Match Classroom Themes
If your classroom has a theme, such as animals or seasons or perhaps even space, identify a weather chart to match. Not only will this enhance the presentation but, more importantly, since weather pertains to earth, it will connect the weather activity with other instructional endeavours.
Complementary Activities to Enhance Weather Learning
But that weather chart is just a start. To reinforce the topic of weather for your students, get some hands-on activities that tap into different senses and learning styles.
Weather-Related Songs, Crafts, and Books
Songs such as ‘Rain, Rain, Go Away’ or ‘It’s Raining, It’s Pouring’ are enjoyable to sing and reflect the day’s weather; the same can be said for other types of weather. Paper suns or rain clouds make it fun for children to handle the weather. Children can read books about weather, such as fiction or non-fiction.
Integrating Weather Tracking with Other Subjects
Weave it into other subjects like math and science – such as asking children to chart how many sunny days there were in a week, or asking them to track the temperature over the course of a month and then graph it. This will not only reinforce the concept of weather but also practise give maths and science a chance too.
Reinforcing Concepts Through Play
Since learning through playworks, there is no reason that learning about the weather shouldn’t be a part of playtime, too! Set up a pretend weather station in your classroom where children can ‘forecast’ the weather, dress according to the weather of the day, or ‘report’ the weather as a make-believe TV reporter. This is the kind of imaginative play that helps strengthen the lessons learned.
Deepen Learning with a Downloadable Weather Chart for Preschool Classroom
But dash it out on the board, and provide a downloadable weather chart for preschool classroom only it becomes the basis for a whole sequence of lessons, fresh with feedback, 21st century quirks and perks. At its best, these classroom tools truly fit in with the things that engage your preschoolers.
Expanding the Weather Chart’s Role in Daily Learning
A weather chart can, of course, be used to track the weather and weather patterns, but, as the example shows, it’s infinitely flexible, providing a basis for all sorts of cross-curricular learning experiences, including stimulating young learners’ powers of enquiry, their language and even their social skills.
FAQs: Maximising the Use of a Weather Chart
Q: How often should we update the weather chart?
A: Provided we update them daily – preferably at the same time each day – a note of what happens every twenty-four hours will give children a feel for the passing of days, the cycles of the seasons and weather, and a basis for the sorts of routine observations that begin to make them truly alert to their surroundings.
Q: Can a weather chart be used in a small home learning environment?
Ok, sure! The online weather chart would work well at home. It’s a fantastic way for parents to incorporate learning activities into everyday life, turning education into the norm.
Q: What if the weather doesn’t change much day-to-day?
A: This is an invitation to identify what influences weather stability, why some places have more ‘changeable’ weather, or what conditions influence the weather. If the weather changes anyway, children can still discuss how it feels, what they can see, and how the weather shapes their day.
Integrating Weather Observations into Other Subjects
A good way to make the most of your downloadable weather chart for preschool classroom is to link weather observations to other categories. For instance, shortly after updating the chart, you could:
- Math: Between Sunday and Friday of next week, which has more sunny or rainy days? (Draw simple bar graphs or pie charts to illustrate)
- Science: Talk about what and why it rains or why the sun shines; use grownup language about the grownup world. Perhaps you could ‘experiment’ with making a rain gauge, or put a mini water cycle together in a jar.
- Arts: Have your children draw what they see as they look out the window. You can also engage in seasonal craft-making, such as snowflakes or kites. This can help your child further personalise her observations.
Encouraging Children to Predict Weather
You can also engage the class by fostering predictions; when the weather watcher has filled in the chart, ask the group what they believe the weather will be like tomorrow. This modest little prediction exercise engages children in collectively thinking about what has been learned and how to apply that information in new contexts.
Story Time with Weather Themes
Finally, after revising the weather chart, bring together the children for story time. Follow it with rainy-day stories such as The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, or sunny-day ones, such as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (1978) by Judi Barrett. By linking the weather to storytelling time, the connections to how weather influences a child’s world are especially strong.
Keeping the Weather Chart Interactive and Fun
To make this an interesting weather chart, it should be kept as an interactive activity. The following techniques will help ensure it becomes a favorite classroom activity.
Rotating Roles and Responsibilities
Make each child a weather watcher for a day, rotating additional positions – like a ‘temperature taker’ or a ‘day of the week’ monitor – if you want to keep everyone interested.
Use of Technology
And don’t forget to use simple technology to make it interesting. Try using a tablet to display live weather information and talk about how that compares with the children’s predictions. Some apps are even available to track weather and so you could show those, too, or allow children to add to them.
Incorporating Seasonal Changes
Modify and update your weather chart according to the changing seasons. When the winter sun comes, include new symbols or sections for recording the season’s typical weather. Perhaps include a snowfall section, or a section for observing flowers blooming in the spring. This way, the chart will remain fresh and engaging!
Enhancing Social and Emotional Learning Through Weather Observation
As an example, a free downloadable weather chart taught through the lens of the classroom routines in preschool also offers the opportunity for social and emotional learning.
Connecting Weather with Feelings
Children often talk about the weather being ‘feeling something’. A sunny day could be a happy day, a rainy day could be a feeling of calm or even a bit sad. Discuss these feelings as you fill out the blank chart. Help them to label what they are feeling.
Group Discussions and Collaboration
The weather chart can be updated by all children, working together to agree the weather conditions for that day, again practising social skills by talking together.
Weather and Mindfulness
Asking the children to be quiet for a minute or two, you should then ask them to observe (and write down) the weather before updating the chart: ‘What do you hear, what do you see, and what do you feel?’ In this brief way, you can help your students become more mindful.
Extending the Learning with Themed Weeks
Or spend a ‘Rain Week’, where the topic is the weather chart, the centre of activities for the week, with books about rain, science about rain, songs, rhymes, games, craft and more.
Planning Weather-Related Field Trips
If possible, organise a short excursion outdoors in relation to the weather, eg, visit a local weather station, take a walk when the rain has stopped, go on a ‘weather hunt’ in the schoolyard, during which they have to observe and report what they notice.
Celebrating Special Weather Events
If it’s the first time they’re seeing the first snowfall of the season, or groundhog day, or perhaps the first time they’re seeing temperatures get as hot as they have in years, make a big deal out of it! Create a spot on the weather chart with a border or few stars to declare this a ‘special weather day’ and discuss why it is such a special day. This type of activity makes weather observation an exciting and memorable part of one’s day.
Making the Most of a Downloadable Weather Chart for Preschool Classroom
And to have a downloadable weather chart for preschool classroom be part of your daily routine helps children be engaged in learning. How you make the chart interactive, how you link it to other subjects, and how you use it to foster social and emotional learning all make it powerful.
There’s a ready-made opportunity each day to embrace the environment, articulate ideas, and collaborate. With a little imagination, your weather chart needn’t simply be a chart: it could be the core of an integrated, creative learning experience.
