Weather Relay

If your house is anything like mine, you may spend a lot of time explaining clothing choices for certain seasons. As much fun as it is to wear a bathing suit, wearing it to the grocery store in January probably isn't a great idea. And my hat lovin' daughter has yet to be concerned with the 80+ degree weather, even while wearing a fleece lined hat and coat.
So I went to Google Images, typed in Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall (individually) and printed off pictures of stereotypical images from each season. Next, I gathered clothing/items to represent each season (summer: shorts, bathing suit, beach towel).
How you play the rest is up to you! Here are 2 options:
1) Call out a season, showing the picture to your child(ren). Have them run to the pile, dig through and find (or dress in) the appropriate clothing. Then double check...do you wear a toboggan in the winter? Mittens? Flip flops?
2) Lay out the 4 season pictures and have them go through and sort into piles which items belong in each season. Set a timer to make it more fun!

At the end, pick a season and have a seasonal snack while dressed up, like drink hot chocolate w/ marshmallows while wearing coats and hats, or snack on a Popsicle while wearing a bathing suit and sunglasses on a beach towel!

Falling Leaves Picture

This is a fun, easy picture for your child to make. A great thing is that she is making a picture of leaves falling, so her main objective is to get the paper leaves on the paper...anywhere on the paper. This makes it friendly for young toddlers on up. Kaitlyn did this in our church nursery.

AGE RANGE
18 months and up. You could try it with a toddler younger than that, but expect to help a lot.

SKILLS TAUGHT

• Science
• Fine motor skills
• Colors

SUPPLIES

• Paper with a tree drawn or printed on it. You want just the tree without leaves. If you are doing this with an older preschooler, you could have him draw the tree himself.
• Pieces of paper to represent leaves. You can do squares, leaf shapes...whatever. You can also let your child rip small pieces of paper up to put on the tree.
• Glue.

ACTIVITY

• Give your child the supplies.
• Have your child paste the leaves on the picture.
• Talk about how leaves change colors in autumn and fall to the ground. Our nursery leaders also talked about our beautiful world.

PHOTO

POST ACTIVITY

A great thing you can do after you make this picture is to go out and rake leaves. Rake them into a pile and jump into them! Also, point out the leaves that are still on the trees.