As I will be teaching Senior Infants this coming year, my focus in the classroom will be on hands on activities as much as possible. With the unit on Weather there are a lot of hands on activities which could be explored. I think first the whole class discussing the weather and the seasons with the help of pictures would be a great place to start. For example, “Is the weather hot or cold? How do we know? What season do we think this is? Why? What are they wearing? Why?” etc. This could be followed by a quick game of Around the World with questions starting with “Something I’d wear when….”. We could follow this using a sorting activity. I love the idea of doing this using real clothes and maybe a dress up box, making a hot weather pile and a cold weather pile. (However depending on the number of items available this would no doubt also work with pictures of the clothing.) This could be followed up by challenging pupils to find and put on something for a cold day or a hot day. Finally the activity from Esero where they recommend handing a picture of different season to each child to colour and individually asking them about their picture, the weather and the season could provide a great assessment for the teacher. Equally asking the child to draw a picture of themselves on a hot or cold day and asking them to explain what they are wearing and why would also be a great way to assess their understanding.
This learning could be extended into Aistear by providing the dress up box for one of the stations and helping the children decide what weather they will dress for that day. It would also link with Eadaí in Gaeilge, Music through learning songs such as “Mr. Golden Sun” or “Frosty the Snowman” depending on the time of year, and any number of Art activities such as Fabric and fiber to make a collage of some clothing using different fabrics.