Teaching toddlers about the seasons and weather
Everyone has a favourite season!
Come on now. You cannot deny it either. It is pretty natural to love a certain time of the year more than the rest. Or at least have a preference for it.
After all, seasons are so fascinating are they not? Every year you get to move through at least four cycles of them, experiencing all the sights, sounds and smells they bring in full swing.
Well, as adults if we can find seasons so fascinating, can you imagine the impact they can have on kids and toddlers? While kids will certainly find the changes fascinating, the four seasons for kids can cause adjustment issues too.
However, as a parent you can make this transition easier for them by educating them about the weather and the changing seasons of the year. Here are ten tips that can get you started on this journey.
- Maintain a season’s journal
- Take a walk to soak in the season
- Get home the season’s produce
- Celebrate your child’s first seasonal encounters
- Use seasonal clothing
- Study the shift of sunlight
- Make your own weather tracker
- Plant a seasonal flower
- Spot the animals of the season
- Observe the leaves
You can break down the four seasons for kids in a much easier manner by keeping a journal. Encourage kids to go outside and draw what they see at least once every month. This could be anything that reflects the change of season. Be it the clothes people wear, the colours of the leaves of the trees, season specific jobs that people do such as raking leaves or shovelling snow. As long as the subject is tangible and season-specific, keeping a record of it will help improve the observation skills of kids so they can understand different seasons better.
Seasons of the year for kids can become easier to grasp once they involve all of their senses into learning about them. The best way to do that is to take your kids for a walk in the neighbourhood park. As you stroll, ask your kids to stop and really soak in the sights, sounds, smells, sensations and tastes of the season. Enrich their vocabulary by asking them questions about how they feel outside. Do they find it cold or hot? Dry or humid? Is it raining or drizzling? Does the air feel fresh or damp? All of these are easy, simple and helpful.
Another way to teach the seasons of the year for kids is to shop for its freshest and finest produce at your local farmer’s market. Pick only the vegetables and fruits exclusively available in that particular season. Bring it home and make a meal out of it so your kids can get a taste of the season. You can even maintain a scrapbook listing all the veggies and fruits you find including instructions and photos of any fun recipes you tried together.
From their first snow to their first time wearing a bathing suit, there are many season-specific milestones that you can celebrate. Marking each of these milestones on a calendar is a great way to create a seasons chart for kindergarten kids as they can keep referring back to it to know what happens when. Not to mention they will have a calendar filled with firsts!
In your seasons chart for kindergarten kids, you can also mark the kind of clothes to wear each season. It can be a very simple way to familiarise kids with the idea of temperature and how it changes all year round. Ask your kid to use the calendar to mark the temperature of the day along with the type of outfit they are wearing that day. For example, if they are wearing a sweater, they can mention that. They can do this for every week of the year and then analyse any trends or patterns they see.
During summer, it is vital to teach your kids why they should keep themselves safe from the rays of the sun. Here is how you can show them practically. Place two pieces of coloured paper outdoors, one in the shade and one direct sunlight. After a few hours, get your kids to observe how the colour of the paper in the sunlight has faded.
Seasons names for kids can become easier to learn if you make your own weather tracker. All you have to do is get a dedicated calendar where you can draw the weather of each day and then track the changes. Make it fun by using sun as the drawing for hot days, clouds for cloudy days, snowflakes for days it snows and so on.
If you have access to a balcony or a backyard, plant the season’s flower there and let your kids observe how the plant changes, grows, wilts and grows again each season. Record the plant’s various cycles so you can evoke a bit of scientific curiosity in your children regarding seasonal changs.
Even if you are living in the city, each season you might notice migratory birds dropping by for a quick visit before they settle in their final destination. Make your kids use binoculars to observe the creatures of nature and how they behave each season.
Be it spring, winter, summer or autumn, nothing shows the effects of the season as well as leaves do. Go out with your kids and let them collect the leaves of each season, which they can then bring back home to analyse how their colours change as the temperature dips or rises. You can create a leaf journal recording all the details pertaining to the leaves you collect.
Learning about the seasons can be an extremely enriching experience for kids. Almost all of the activities seasons name for kids and beyond help kids closer to nature. This can improve their understanding of how nature works while satisfying any curiosities they may have had concerning the same. At EuroKids too, we take a sr approach to educating kids about the season. You can find out more about it by visiting us.