Activities on seasons for kindergarten: Activities for Exploring the Four Seasons

Four Seasons: Activities for Kindergarten & Preschool

Resources

Feb 12

Written By Jessica Jones

Why Do We Use Activities To Teach The Four Seasons?

If I learned anything during my early years studying child development, it was that kids are always playing because that’s how they learn!

I remember being dumbfounded by some Early Childhood Education classes that had us create activities with popsicles and write complex lesson plans on states of matter.

Or the best, reiterating the need to have blocks available for children during physics lessons to solidify their grasp of gravity.

Uh, really? Are you really teaching a physics lesson, or are they playing? Let them play.

Play First!

By playing before teaching, your children will have concrete experiences to anchor their learning. Teaching the four seasons is multifaceted! It’s nearly impossible to understand the coldness of snow and ice without feeling it for yourself. “It’s really cold” – doesn’t fly. Give them some ice.

No snow where you live? Use picture books! Kids learn through all kinds of experiences, even those lived through stories!

Use Intentional Play Activities For Learning The Four Seasons

Toddle Emily out in the spring rain! Learning about cloths with the boots, jacket, and so much more!

It’s generally accepted that young children should be able to differentiate between the four seasons at a relatively young age. Lucky for us homeschooling kindergartners and preschoolers, this can be a pretty easy yet significant science milestone to achieve with our kiddos!

The best way to cement the concept of different seasons is to have intentional play activities that allow them to experience the seasons in first a concrete, then abstract way.

Begin With Activities For Concrete Learning

People have unlimited access to the outdoors, and there is no better way to learn about the four seasons than by stepping outside to experience the weather of your current season! Besides, being outside is so much fun!

Get outside and explore the characteristics of the season. Talk about what you see and watch! Exciting things happen in stillness (if you can get the kids still… ha!)

• Weather: hot, cold, snow, sun, rain, cloud types, etc.

• Plants: trees & foliage, growing sprouts or harvesting pumpkins, flower buds or full blooms?

• Animals: babies and nests or foraging for food, robins or bucks with full antlers

Try All The Different Seasons Activities!

Each of the four seasons offers a bit of magic – try some of these ideas!

• Spring: plant a garden, find bird nests, feel the cold water in the creek from the snow melt, splash in spring rain puddles

• Summer: go swimming at the beach, harvest summer fruits and veggies, play in the sprinkler, watch fireworks on a hot night, drink iced tea or lemonade, make homemade popsicles or ice cream

• Fall: visit a pumpkin patch, go apple picking at a farm, rake big leaf piles and jump in them, make a scarecrow for your yard, watch squirrels gather acorns, drink apple cider or pumpkin spiced drinks, bake all the pies

• Winter: try ice skating, play in the snow, build a snow fort, put seeds out for winter birds, drink hot cocoa,

Read Books About Seasons

Don’t forget the magic of picture books! There are tons of books specifically about seasons – or simply read your child’s favorite books and notice the setting in them! Are they winter stories? Are children playing outside? What are their clothes?

While you’re reading and noticing seasons within the setting, use the time to work on print awareness skills with your pre-reader! These cross-curricular moments happen all the time!

Seasonal Picture Book Lists – Take These Lists To The Library!

• Picture Books for Spring

• Picture Books for Summer

• Picture Books for Fall

• Picture Books for Winter

Keep a Nature Journal

Some families like to keep a simple nature journal where you and your child can draw pictures and practice noticing patterns as the year goes by. I’m horrible at drawing, but I assure you, kids don’t care about your art skills! Model active learning – this is the foundation for note-taking as they get older!

We use Exploring Nature With Children for our Preschool Outdoor Science curriculum – I’ll link that at the bottom of the post if you want to explore their site. It’s a PDF-to-print curriculum.

Play Around With Seasonal Clothing

Dig into that closet and pull out your sun hats, snow jackets, shorts, and sweat pants! Seasonal clothing is a fantastic start towards reinforcing the differences in each of the four seasons. Don’t forget boots and sandals! Make it silly!

Play a game where your child dresses up for the season. This is a great activity to have them use their senses to describe what they’re experiencing with their bodies! Ask them questions that make them use their senses to get really engaged.

*Parent Bonus – you get to sift through the closet and find what doesn’t fit anymore!

Dress Up Activity

Types of questions to ask while playing with clothes – feel free to lead them with clues during your conversation!

• With these clothes on, does your body feel hot or cold?

• Will this help warm you up or keep you cool?

• Does the fabric feel light or heavy? Thick or thin?

• Is this best for a hot summer day or a cold winter day? (see how the season names are peppered in with anchor descriptions of hot and cold?)

You can play silly yes/no games based on age that help kids learn the correct season for clothes.

• Would you wear your swimsuit in the winter snow?

• Should you wear these warm winter boots in the snow?

• Would you wear a fuzzy snow hat on a summer trip to the beach?

• Would you bring an umbrella on a walk outside in a spring rain shower?

Pepper in weather words with your questions once they have a grasp on what clothing is most appropriate for different types of temperatures.

• What hat is best for keeping the bright spring sun out of your face while doing a gardening activity?

• What shoes are best for jumping in puddles on a rainy spring day

• What would you wear to play at the water table on a hot summer day?

Turn Knowing Seasonal Clothing Choices Into Abstract Learning

Through dress-up games alone, kids will grasp a tremendous amount! Variations in temperatures, variations in clothes, variations in weather, variations in seasonal activities, etc.

To help make that learning stick, take it abstract! This takes learning to a new level in the brain and has them apply learned concepts in a different way. Let’s build up those synaptic connections!

Use Picture Sorts To Boost Brain Connections

I love having fun picture sorts that have kids flex their fine motor skills with coloring, cutting, and gluing. Picture sorts are quick and easy, but the brain power is incredible!

Sorts are also great because you can print out the activity and have your child do it multiple times!

Every time they cut the pieces out, they get mixed around. This creates a novel experience every time! There’s no way they will use the same pieces in the same order every time. This means that while the brain is creating recognition patterns between the clothes and the seasons, it is not completing the sort based on the pattern of which pieces are glued down based on a specific order (hat, boot, sweater, etc. ).

You can print this baby out every few weeks to reinforce as necessary!

Simple Activities Reinforce Icon Clues for Different Seasons

As adults, we see a picture of a snowman and know it’s a reference to winter. Hot cocoa? Definitely not summer. We talk about pumpkins, harvesting apples, or pies and turkey and know it’s fall. We don’t need the words literally spelled out for us.

Kids need to learn these subliminal cues, which can be taught seamlessly with coloring pages, puzzles, and other simple activities. There is zero need for instruction, it is fun for kids, and super easy reinforcement for homeschooling mamas – especially when you might need to teach math to an older sibling…

I promise you these are not fluff activities for littles! They are learning to read environmental print, so to speak, a fancy term for when kids “read” images as words (pre-reading skills, yo!)

Kids need to be clued into knowing society’s different types of cues and icons for the seasons.

Teach The Four Seasons Through Arts And Crafts

Crafts are also a fun, hands on way to reinforce spring, summer, fall, and winter differences.

In this house, I give the most basic instructions for art activities and never prepare resources for my children to recreate. Art is a time to develop ideas and expressions. Let them amaze you! My kids have always loved anything that involved finger painting!

• Use cotton balls to make a snow scene when talking about winter.

• Glue some tissue paper flowers to reinforce new spring growth.

• Find a spring hummingbird craft for preschoolers (hint, I like this super easy pom-pom one)

• Create a painting activity that depicts a beautiful summer day.

• Rip construction paper leaves to make a fall tree that is losing its leaves

I am not a crafty person, so by all means, skip the hummingbird craft and I won’t judge!

Or… break out the paper plates, pipe cleaner, hot glue, tissue paper, cotton balls, food coloring and shaving cream, have your child finger paint, etc. and let loose!

Sure, these are activities for kids, but there’s no reason why you can’t join in and have some fun, too! The Pre K to early elementary years are for messes – embrace!

Teach The Four Seasons Through Compare And Contrast Activities

Once kiddos start to grasp the concept of what belongs to the correct seasons, they can differentiate abstractly between what makes sense (a scarf for winter) and what doesn’t (a scarf for summer).

Sorts are a fantastic way to put concrete knowledge to use in an abstract way. They WORE the thick jacket in the snow and FELT the cold air. Now they’re ready to recall that information and categorize it against a topic that doesn’t make sense. Each of the four seasons is similar in some ways, yet totally different. That can be tough!

Winter weather is cold; summer weather is hot—spring activities versus fall activities. Sorts help kids physically and mentally categorize and catalog information in the brain.

Don’t forget to utilize picture books! Compare and contrast the pictures, what the characters are doing, wearing, and so on!

Summing It All Up!

Your kiddos will easily learn about the four seasons with time and guided discovery. It’s very realistic to expect that a child can master this by their early elementary years and that it can provide opportunities for a whole lot of fun!

Remember

1. Play first! Kids need experiences to anchor their learning about the four seasons.

2. Create intentional activities about seasons for concrete learning

3. Utilize picture books when the season doesn’t match your lesson (Lists: spring, summer, fall, winter)

4. Provide abstract activities that reinforce concrete knowledge. Reinforce your teaching with my Four Seasons: Kindergarten & Preschool Science Lessons, in the shop!

5. Have fun! Remember that just as it takes time for the seasons to change, it will take that much time and more to apply the learning.

Further Resources:

My Favorite Preschool Science Curriculum

When heading outdoors for intentional learning, it is SO helpful to have a structured guide. Willy-nilly outside time is imperative, but when you want it to feel productive (for the adult, not the child), a structured sequence to your fun adventures is priceless.

I love the preschool and early elementary science curriculum, Exploring Nature With Children by Raising Little Shoots! I had my PDF version printed and bound so it was easy to look through, reference, and grab for on-the-go learning.

It is predominantly open & go, has book lists, questions to ask, what to notice by the week/season, is reusable, can be started at any time, and is pure amazingness.

Play!

Play is important. If you disagree, please read these for the sake of every child (they need educated advocates!)

• Video From Harvard University: Play in Early Childhood: The Role of Play in Any Setting

• From American Academy of Pediatrics, 2007: The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds

• From EdSource, 2021: Why child’s play is serious business in early education

• From The Hechinger Report, 2022: Want resilient and well-adjusted kids? Let them play

• From Parenting For Brain, 2022: Importance of Play in Early Childhood (9 Benefits & Infographic) – The references on this post are fantastic!

Related Products to Check Out

Four SeasonsPreschoolKindergartenScienceFebruary 2023

Jessica Jones

The 4 Seasons Activities: Easy Must-have lesson plans

Teaching kids about the seasons can be a fun and engaging experience. Whether you’re teaching your own children or a classroom of students, there are some must-have lessons that will help kids understand how the weather changes throughout the year. With these 4 seasons activities, you can introduce your students to the four main seasons: winter, spring, summer, and fall. 

Introduce Vocabulary

Start by introducing vocabulary related to each season. Use pictures or flashcards to help kids learn words like “winter” and “summer,” as well as other seasonal words like “snowman” and “sunscreen.” This will give them a better understanding of which season comes when. 

Snag a free roadmap to help you stay on track throughout the year when you are lesson planning. HERE!

To help you plan out your year, grab a free yearly overview for science, which makes planning stress-free.

Practice Tracking Weather Changes

An excellent way for children to learn about the seasons is by tracking weather changes over time using temperature charts and graphs. For example, have them fill out a chart each day with what type of clothing they wore that day (e.g., shorts in summer vs. sweaters in winter). They can also track other factors like precipitation levels and wind speed throughout different seasons. 

You can also use real-time web resources like NOAA’s National Weather Service or The Weather Channel to track current weather patterns around the world. 

Length of Day and Night: 4 Seasons Activities 

The main factor in determining what season it is at any given time is the length of daylight versus nighttime. By showing students diagrams or pictures, explain how daylight hours are longer than night hours during summer, while in winter, night hours are longer than day hours. This will help them understand why we experience different temperatures in different seasons due to the amount of sunlight exposure during each season. 

Explore Nature

Another fun 4 seasons activities is to take your students on field trips outdoors to explore nature during each season! In winter, they can look for animal tracks in the snow or make snow angels; in springtime, they can observe how flowers bloom; in summer, they can search for bugs; and in fall, they can go leaf-peeping! These outdoor activities will give them first-hand knowledge about how weather changes from season to season and inspire appreciation for nature all year round!

Incorporate Art Projects

Art projects are an excellent way for children to get creative while learning about how weather changes throughout the year. Have them create a painting featuring animals that hibernate in winter or draw pictures of plants blooming in springtime! You could even assign group art projects where they make a mural representing all four seasons side-by-side. 

4 Seasons Activities for kids

As teachers, it’s important that we teach our students not just what each season is but also why it happens—how changing temperatures lead to different types of weather patterns and various forms of wildlife activity across all four seasons of the year! These must-have lessons and 4 seasons activities should help you introduce young learners to concepts related to seasonal weather changes so that they leave your class feeling more informed than ever before!

Add in pre-made 4 seasons activities

Teaching the seasons does not have to take long. With state testing, it is hard to fit it all in. If you are struggling with coming up with lesson plans on your own, I’ve got you covered. My Weather Curriculum Pack is perfect for 2nd and 3rd graders. It is full of lesson plans, anchor charts, low-prep science experiments, worksheets, and quizzes.

Each unit comes with:

• lesson plans
• vocabulary words
• anchor chart ideas
• an interactive notebook activity or corresponding worksheet
• nonfiction reading passages
• additional worksheets perfect for a science station
• an end of the unit quiz to assess their understanding of the topic

Figuring out how to fit science into your day is easy when all the work is done for you!

Grab MORE teaching ideas here!

7 EASY TOPICS FOR 2ND GRADE LIFE SCIENCE CURRICULUM

SECOND GRADE SCIENCE BASIC PRINCIPLES: 6 EASY TEACHING TOPICS

7 WAYS TO MAKE WORKSHEETS ENGAGING FOR KIDS

Seasonal clothing | Outline of the lesson on the world around on the topic:

State budgetary preschool educational institution

kindergarten No. 34

of a general developmental type with priority implementation of activities

on the cognitive and speech development of children

Krasnogvardeisky district St. Petersburg a

Interactive game

using ICT

for primary preschool age

“We will dress Masha according to the season”.

Completed by

teacher
Kindergarten No. 34 of the Krasnogvardeisky district

Olga Vadimovna Vikhrova

St. Petersburg

2018 900 03

Purpose: To develop children’s ideas about seasonal clothing

Objectives:

Educational:

1. Consolidation of children’s knowledge about their clothes

2. Consolidation of the general concept of “Clothes”

Developing:

1. Development of skills in choosing clothes in accordance with the season

2. Development of skills to undress and dress independently and quickly enough

3. Development of fine motor skills

Educational:

1. To cultivate the communicative qualities of children
2. Continue to form mutual assistance and mutual assistance in a group, the ability to work in a team .

Preliminary work: GCD on cognitive development “Clothes”, a conversation about the seasons, winter, guessing riddles about clothes, looking at illustrations and visual materials on the topic “Clothes”, coloring books on the topic, appliqué.

Materials and equipment:

– interactive equipment

– presentation on the theme of the interactive game

– large travel bag

– two baskets (or boxes): red and blue winter ) and flower (summer)

– sets of children’s clothing, summer and winter (various elements are presented).

Course of the lesson:

1. Greetings:

Educator: Hello guys! Today is on the street is cloudy and damp, and in the street our group is bright and cheerful! And our bright smiles are fun, because every smile is a little sun that makes you feel warm and good. Therefore, I suggest you smile to each other more often and give others a good mood!0003

2. Guys, I want to ask you a riddle:

He is standing in the corner near the wall.

Oh, he looks huge,

But he is not punished at all.

Mom keeps things in it. (CABINET) (Children’s answer)

SLIDE No. 1

Educator: That’s right, this is the closet in which clothes are stored, “live”. Everyone has it in the house and no one leaves the house without looking into it. Why do you think? (Answers of children).

Educator: Yes, each of us will not leave the house without clothes. Look at our guessing picture, there Masha and Sasha also choose their own clothes.

Sound slide with baby crying.

SLIDE No. 2

Educator: What is this? Who is crying? Let’s ask Masha what happened?

Masha’s audio response sounds: “I went outside for a walk and got cold.”

Educator: Children, why do you think Masha got cold? (Answers of children).

Educator: Masha did not know that each season has its own clothes. Do you know? (Answers of children).

Educator: Do you remember what season it is now? (if not already named) (Children’s answers).

Educator: What is the name of the clothes we wear in winter? (Answers of children).

Educator: Let’s help Masha, tell her how to dress? (Answers of children).

Educator: What do you and I need to choose first? (Answers of children).

Educator: Look, Masha brought almost all the clothes from the closet in her bag. How to deal with this? (Assumptions of children).

Educator: Let’s help Masha. I have two baskets, blue and red. But remind me, please, what season is it now? (Answers of children).

Educator: In which basket shall we put our winter clothes? And what – summer? (Answers of children).

Educator: So, One-two-three, take some clothes for Masha…

Cheerful music is playing, children are laying out clothes.

Educator: Well done, we got full baskets. Let’s take a look at the summer basket. What clothes are here? (Answers of children, if something got here by mistake – we understand and explain everything in detail; Approximate lexical material: sundress, shorts, T-shirt, cap, scarf, light trousers).

Educator: What is the name of this clothing? (Answers of children).

Educator: What is it, summer clothes? (Answers of children).

Educator: Why is she like that? (Answers of children).

Educator: Yes, it’s hot, so you need very thin clothes. But now, you say, it’s winter outside, let’s see what you selected in the blue basket … (Answers of children, Approximate lexical material: warm jacket, warm pants, mittens, hat, sweater, scarf, etc.)

Educator: What we can talk about these things. What are they? (Answers of children).

Educator: Why are winter clothes so warm and thick? (Answers of children).

Educator: Of course. Guys, what will we give Masha to wear? Bring Masha the clothes in which she will be warm now for a walk.

Children place these items of clothing on a chair.

Educator: Let’s see what you have chosen? (Answers of children).

Educator: Well done, you helped Masha. We are a little tired, it’s time to warm up.

Educator: Guys, Masha needs to get dressed quickly so as not to freeze and not get sick. Do you know how to dress quickly? (Answers of children).

Educator: Now let’s check. Let’s dress for speed. Who wants to be the first to try? (2 people come out (or the teacher appoints) and, to cheerful fast music, they begin to dress in winter clothes as if for a walk (without shoes).

The game can be played several times.

Educator: Well done! Did we pick up clothes for Masha? (Children’s answers)

Educator: Did you like helping? (Children’s answers).

Educator: Look, our Masha is delighted and is going to sled down the hill. She thanks you and invites you to the street too, for a walk

Children go for a walk. SLIDE No. 3

Useful activities and games in kindergarten and manuals for them

Kindergarten is a place where kids spend a lot of time. And so that the hours of stay there are not wasted, educators organize a variety of useful activities and exciting games. What exactly can be offered to children and what materials and manuals for this should be purchased in kindergarten, read on.

Getting to know the outside world

Preschool childhood is the very period when a child gets to know the world. Therefore, classes are regularly held in the kindergarten, where they give various information about the environment. How to safely cross the road, what types of transport are available, what are the seasons of the year, when what clothes are worn, what kind of plants can be found in the yard, what animals are found in the nearest forest … Educators talk with the kids on these and many other topics.

Help everyone to clearly and clearly explain the various kindergarten aids:

• demonstration tables and cards with plants, animals, clothing, furniture, vehicles, musical instruments, etc.;
• stands, for example, with the rules of the road or with the calendar of nature;
• multimedia aids – they are launched on electronic devices (interactive tables, tablets, etc. ).

Role-playing games of daughters-mothers, a store, a hospital, a school, etc. help to live through the situations that were discussed in the classes on the world around. and medical instruments, little animals, doll furniture.

Development of fine motor skills

One of the important tasks of the kindergarten period is to help kids master the small movements of the hands. Firstly, the development of speech is directly related to this: the more accurate the actions of the fingers, the better the child speaks. Secondly, such motor skills are necessary for the school – to learn how to write legibly. Thirdly, this is a generally useful skill for life, since many things require precise coordination of the muscles of the hands, for example, cooking.

Puzzle toy – fun for brain and fingers

Lessons for the development of fine motor skills are classes with small objects. What you need:

• Montessori frame inserts;
• cubes and bricks from Frebel sets;
• educational construction sets with blocks like Lego;
• puzzles;
• mosaic;
• lacing.

Children can learn to control their hand muscles while playing a fun puppet theater with glove puppets. This entertainment also helps to improve memory when children play out familiar tales (Turnip, Little Red Riding Hood), and pump up the imagination if the kids come up with their own story.

Sensor Development

Much attention in kindergarten is paid to working with the senses, because the more information they receive, the better the brain works. To do this, use the following visual aids:

• sensory domino – you can find different textures on its surface;
• musical instruments – they introduce a variety of sounds;
• sorting boards – figures are placed on them by color or shape.

For the development of both fine motor skills and tactile sensations, playing with kinetic sand is very useful. Thanks to its special composition, it perfectly holds its shape, but is also easily affected. Working with him calms even the most active and helps even the most withdrawn to express themselves.

Kinetic sand is viscous and should not be thrown into each other’s eyes. This is important for kindergarten

Preparing for school

One of the functions of the kindergarten is to give the kids knowledge and skills that will be useful in school. Therefore, in the senior and preparatory groups, pupils get acquainted with letters and numbers, learn simple arithmetic operations. A variety of tables and cards, magnetic stands, multimedia aids help them in this.

Kindergarteners sitting for several hours in a row is not healthy at all. Therefore, classes at the tables should alternate with outdoor games, for which all kinds of sports equipment should be kept in a preschool institution: balls, skittles, towns, sticks, hoops.

In the center “Rector” you can buy various equipment for kindergarten wholesale and retail and equip the institution so that the pupils would be interested in spending time there.