50+ Preschool Weather Activities Your Kids Will Want to Do Again and Again
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Kids love learning about the weather, and these easy activities make it fun for your child or an entire classroom!
Learning about the different kinds of weather is a beloved preschool tradition, and it’s one you can easily do at home with your child or with a class full of students. Preschool weather activities, such as making a rain gauge or wind sock or tracking the number of rainy days, can help kids learn about weather and the words used to describe it, plus the effects weather has on the world around us. Choose from our list of weather activities and crafts below–they’re great for toddlers and kindergarteners too!
Weather Tracking Activities for Preschool
Preschool weather tracking activities can help kids make observations about what they see, feel, and hear around them and learn the signs of changing weather, such as darker clouds, higher winds, and more.
1. Weather Calendar
Buy a big desk calendar and hang it on your wall. Each day, record the weather, and ask your preschooler to draw a picture in that day’s calendar square to match!
2. Weather Bar Graph
At the end of the month, look back over your calendar and create a bar graph showing how many days were sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy, etc. You can also do this as a pictograph, using pictures of suns, raindrops, or snowflakes.
3. Temperature Line Graph
Each day, plot the high temperature on a line graph. Look it over at the end of the month, and talk about the patterns and trends you see with your child. Compare one month to another to see how the seasons change the weather.
4. Rain Gauge
It’s easy to make your own rain gauge with an empty glass jar. Remove the lid, and use a ruler and permanent marker to mark quarter-inch, half-inch, and one-inch marks along the outside. Set it outside and check it after every shower.
5. Weather Journal
Expand your weather calendar into a weather journal. Have your child draw a picture of the weather each day. Record the high and low temperatures, note any measurable rain or snow, and include any interesting facts like high wind speeds or storm warnings.
6. Predict the Weather
This one is really fun! Each night, ask your child to predict the weather for the following day. You’ll all enjoy seeing whether they’re right or wrong, plus this weather activity gives your little one practice with logic and reasoning skills.
Preschool Weather Crafts
Weather crafts add creativity to learning about the weather and can include simple projects, like creating cotton ball clouds, to more involved ideas, like building a weather spinner. Kids of all ages will enjoy this art-focused approach to learning about the world around them.
7. Weather Word Wall
Write weather-related words on notecards, and ask your child to draw a picture to illustrate each one. Hang the cards to create a word wall you can refer to as you talk about the weather each day.
8. Weather Spinner
Divide a paper plate into sections and label each with a type of weather like rainy, sunny, cloudy, snow, windy, etc. Cut out a construction paper arrow and attach it to the center using a brad. Each day, have your child move the arrow to indicate the current weather conditions.
9. Cotton Ball Clouds
This classic preschool weather activity is always lots of fun. Provide cotton balls, glue, and blue construction paper, then make fluffy clouds you can hang on your walls!
10. Paper Pinwheels
Enjoy windy days with homemade pinwheels. Cut a square of construction paper and mark the center. Use scissors to cut a line from each corner diagonally toward the center, about halfway to the dot in the middle. Bend every other section to the center and pin with a brad.
Flatten the top of a disposable straw and poke the brad through, fastening and then rotating it a few times to ensure it spins freely. Now, head outside to watch the wind make them spin!
11. R is for Rain
Trace an uppercase block R onto construction paper, then cut it out. Add some clouds and paint in the raindrops.
12. Sun Prints
You’ll need some special paper for making sun prints, known as cyanotype, but it’s easy to find online. Follow the directions to use the sun to make prints of any objects you like! Kids will be fascinated by this craft, and want to try it again and again.
13. S is for Sun
Speaking of the sun, here’s a simple and easy weather craft that celebrates sunny days. Use wood craft sticks painted yellow for the rays, or substitute pipe cleaners, ribbon, or any other materials you have on hand.
14. Wind Sock
This is another classic preschool weather craft the whole family can enjoy. Start by making a cylinder from card stock, decorated with paints, crayons, markers, or even glitter. Cut pieces of ribbon or paper streamers and attach them around the bottom edge. Poke four evenly-spaced holes around the top edge and tie string to create a hanger. Take them outside and watch the wind make them dance!
15. Wind Wheel
These little wind wheels are made from plastic bottle caps, and they’re so adorable! Kids will have fun decorating them and playing with them indoors and out.
16. Raindrop Names
You’ll need gray and blue construction paper along with some string for this craft. Start by cutting a big gray rain cloud. Then, cut out raindrops, one for each letter of your child’s name. Write the letters on the drops, then use a hole punch and string to attach them to the raincloud.
17. S is for Snowman
Follow the directions to make a simple paper snowman when you’re learning about snow and the letter S. Make it extra fun by providing beads, glitter, yarn, and other supplies so kids can dress up their snow people too!
18. Paper Snowflakes
Every kid loves cutting out paper snowflakes. Show them how to fold the paper and cut small shapes from the edges, then unfold to reveal a masterpiece! Look at pictures of snowflakes up close to see how yours compares.
19. Pasta Snowflakes
These pasta snowflakes are pretty enough to keep and hang all season long! You and your child will have fun choosing different types of dried pasta at the store, then turning them into delicate snowflake decorations.
20. K is for Kite Flying
Use construction paper and string to make colorful little kites you can hang indoors, reminding you of flying kites outside windy days!
Hands-On Preschool Weather Activities
Sensory activities help preschoolers connect with nature by engaging their senses of touch, smell, and sound. These activities help to encourage children to explore the natural world while enhancing their sensory development.
21. The Itsy-Bitsy Spider
Every kid loves this song about the Itsy-Bitsy Spider and its adventures in the water spout. As you sing, recreate the story with a cardboard tube and toy spider. Talk about how the weather affects the spider, and other animals too.
22. Sun Coloring Page
Print this coloring page and use it for weather activities as you learn about the sun and its effects.
23. Snowflake Coloring Page
This free printable snowflake page is perfect for winter crafts. Try filling it in using glitter glue for an extra special effect!
24. Playdough Weather
Sculpt different kinds of weather using playdough. You can make a yellow sun, blue rain drops, or white fluffy clouds. Try using dough cutters to create snowflakes too!
25. By-the-Weather Activities
Brainstorm with your child to make lists of activities you can enjoy in different kinds of weather. When it’s warm and sunny, you can have a picnic, play soccer in the park, or go to the beach. When it’s rainy, you might snuggle up for story time indoors or splash your way through a puddle walk. This gets your little one thinking about how weather affects their daily lives!
26. Ice Cube Painting
Frigid weather means snow and ice, which melts when things warm up. Demonstrate this by mixing a few drops of food coloring into water in ice cube trays, adding a popsicle stick to each. When they’re frozen, pop them out and use them to paint pictures, showing your child how ice melts into water when temps are warmer.
27. Weather Sensory Bins
Create sensory bins for different kinds of weather. A rainy day bin could be filled with water and water toys, while a snowy day bin has lots of fluffy white pom pom “snowballs” plus a small shovel and some mittens. Be creative—the whole point is to help your child explore!
28. Cloud Drawing
Spread a surface with a layer of shaving cream to represent a cloudy sky. Then, let your child use their fingers to draw pictures in the clouds. They can practice writing letters and numbers this way too.
29. Weather Dress-Up
What kind of clothing do we wear for different kinds of weather? Play a game of dress-up with your child. Ask them to put on the clothes and accessories they would wear for a snowy day, or one when it rains. (Don’t forget to “put on” sunscreen for a sunny day!)
30. Weather Charades
In this game of charades, players act out different types of weather for others to guess. You could mime making a snowman for a snowy day or opening an umbrella and splashing through puddles for rain. Simple and fun!
31. Cloud Gazing
Choose a day full of big puffy clouds, then lay on your backs and watch the shapes float by. Look for pictures in the clouds, and see how they change as the clouds move. Afterwards, draw pictures of your favorite cloud shapes to remember them by.
32. Shadow Tracing
Head outside with some sidewalk chalk on a sunny day, and have fun tracing your shadows on the pavement. Note how your shadows change as the sun gets higher or lower in the sky too, and talk about why you don’t see your shadow on a cloudy day.
33. Rainbow Color Match
Rain + sun = a rainbow! Give your child pipe cleaners and beads colored red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Ask them to string the colored beads onto the matching pipe cleaners, then arrange them to form a beautiful rainbow.
Preschool Weather Experiments
Preschool weather experiments are a fun and hands-on way to introduce young children to the wonders of the natural world. These simple activities help kids observe, ask questions, and learn basic science concepts as they explore rain, wind, clouds, and more.
34. Water Cycle in a Bag
Here’s another classic preschool weather activity. All you need is a plastic zipper bag, a permanent marker, and a sunny window. On the outside of the plastic bag, draw a line to represent a lake or ocean at the bottom, and a sun and clouds along the top. Fill the bag with an inch or so of water, colored blue if you like. Seal the bag and hang it in a sunny window. Watch as the water evaporates up to the “sky,” then “rains” back down to the bottom.
35. Melt the Ice
Put an ice cube in each well of a muffin tin, then try different ways to speed up the melting process. What happens if you add warm water, cold water, salt, sugar, sand, or other things? Make predictions about what will happen, and see if you’re right.
36. Sunscreen Test
Does sunscreen really work? Find out with some construction paper! Draw a line to divide the paper in half. On one side, apply some sunscreen. Leave the other half unprotected, then set the paper out in a sunny spot for the day. At the end of the day, bring the paper back inside and compare: what happened to each part?
37. Shaving Cream Rain Clouds
Little learners love this weather experiment! Fill a large clear glass jar with water, then squirt some shaving cream on top to act as “clouds.” Add blue food coloring to a few tablespoons of water, then use a dropper to slowly drip it on top of the shaving cream. Watch as the colored water saturates the clouds, eventually becoming too heavy and falling just like rain!
38. Indoor Snow
You can find lots of recipes for “indoor snow” online. One of the easiest is a mix of baking soda and shaving cream—it actually feels cold to the touch! This is an especially fun activity for kids who live in places where snow isn’t common (or doesn’t fall at all).
39. Rainbow in a Cup
Make your very own rainbow and learn about liquid density too! This experiment takes a little patience and time, but it never fails to amaze.
40. Pine Cone Weather Station
Did you know pinecones can predict the weather? It’s true! Set some pinecones out and observe them. You’ll notice that they open up wider in dry weather, and close up their scales when rain is on the way. Fascinating!
ABCmouse Preschool Weather Games and Videos
Discover how rain, sunshine, snow, and clouds work with ABCmouse Preschool Weather Games and Videos designed just for preschoolers. Through interactive games and animated videos, children learn to identify different types of weather and understand how weather affects daily life.
41. Mixed Up Weather Gear Game
In this free-to-play online game, children will sort clothing and accessories into different chef’s bowls labeled with the seasons.
42. What is the Weather Today
Sing along to this catchy song to learn about the different kinds of weather!
43. Rainbow Traceables: Fog
Get in some reading and vocabulary practice while playing this free online game. As kids trace the letters, they turn into rainbows!
44. Alice’s Monsters: Number Clouds
This free game is likely too advanced for preschoolers, but it’s great for older siblings. As they play, children will help Alice and her Monsters add three or four single-digit numbers.
45. Ivan’s Cloud Creator
This free game provides a fun way for kids to learn the names of different types of clouds. They’ll help Ivan upgrade his cloud creator by matching images of different types of clouds with their names.
46. Weather Poetry Puzzle: Cloudy
Preschoolers can work on assembling this free online puzzle featuring a short poem. It’s a great brain game that also provides an opportunity for reading together.
47. Weather Poetry Puzzle: Rainy
Try another weather puzzle and read about the rain as you work together to solve it.
48. Weather Poetry Puzzle: Foggy
Learn more about the words “fog” and “foggy” in this digital weather puzzle for kids.
49. Splish Splash! Dance in the Rain
Need a brain break? Have fun dancing in the “rain” with this interactive video from ABCmouse.
50. Fact Match: The Sun
Play this online learning game to see what you know about the sun, and learn some amazing new facts.
51. A Jog in the Fog
In this cute rhyming story, kids will learn about fog and how it affects the world around you.
52. Ivan’s Weather Journal
Join Ivan in this online learning game to learn more advanced weather terms like atmosphere, thermometer, and more.
53. Violet’s Weather Rescue
Violet uses weather to help little learners manage big feelings. Watch the video, then try drawing pictures of weather and feelings with your child.
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