Weather School / First Weather · ages 2 to 5

Four weather rocks lined up like a class photo: spring under a red umbrella with tulips, summer in sunglasses under the sun, fall in an orange scarf with falling leaves, and winter wearing a snow cap beside snowflakes.

The Seasons

What season is it right now, and how can you tell without a calendar?

The weather rock outside under a part cloudy sky, waiting to be looked at.

The mission: guess first, then go look

Guess what your favourite tree is wearing today: green leaves, coloured leaves, bare branches, or tiny new buds.

Go visit the tree and check. Trees never lie about the season. They just answer slowly.

Summer days are long and warm. Winter days are short and cold.

Spring and fall are the in-between times, when the weather is making up its mind.

The seasons always take turns, in the same order, around and around.

Professor Weather Rock in a graduation cap, pointing upward with a wooden pointer.

Professor Weather Rock says

When it is summer where you live, it is winter on the far side of the world. The seasons are always all happening; they just take turns with you.

Rocktivity Time!

Pick a door. Every door is a good one.

Move like the weather

Act out the whole year. Spring: sprout up slow from a little seed crouch. Summer: stretch wide in the sun. Fall: wiggle your leaf fingers down to the floor. Winter: stand bare and still as a stick. Then start the year again.

Ask them

“Which season is it right now? How can you tell?”

The Rocktivity

Draw the same tree once in every season: green leaves, bright colours, bare branches, new buds. Four little pictures make one whole year.

Any day this week, try this

Start a season watch: same tree, same window, once a week. Each time, guess what changed before you look. Nothing changed is also an answer. Seasons move slower than weeks, and finding that out is the experiment.

Is the rock right?

You looked with your own eyes. The rock is outside looking too. Ask it what it sees, then decide together who read the sky better.

Words we learned

Seasonnounsay it: SEE-zunOne of the year's four weather moods: spring, summer, fall, winter.

Yearnounsay it: YEEROne whole trip through all four seasons.

For the grown-up

Seasons come from the Earth's tilt, not its distance from the sun, but that lesson can wait a few years. Today's lesson is that weather has patterns you can watch for, and a tree is a slow, reliable instrument for it.

Take it off the screen

A colouring sheet with the big word to trace, plus the whole lesson in print. Free for any home or classroom.

Print the colouring sheet and lesson (PDF)

The trail continues

Every season has its moods, but the sky still picks fresh every single morning. Tomorrow, first thing, look out the window and say out loud what it chose.

That is the whole game, and What Is Weather? is where the trail starts again.