Ideas to make Rainy Days more fun for preschoolers - A Project.

The rainy season brings with it exciting new learning opportunities for children. We took the opportunity of the showers in Bangalore to teach children concepts of measurement and estimation. We took inspiration from various sites and set out to do a bit of our own experiment.

Intention:

1. Understand children's extend of knowledge of rain and how the rainfall is measured.
2. Introduce measurement through measuring of rainfall.
3. Introduce estimation (for higher age groups) and compare estimates to actuals.
4. Integrate other concepts of rain and nature.
5. Have FUN!

Planning process:

All our teachers put their heads together and put together the props required to make this project successful. Since it is still the first month of school, teachers made the props themselves. We believe that in the future projects we can involve the children in the planning process too. Here are some pictures from the planning stage.

The project:

The children in Kindergarten levels were introduced to the concept of rainfall. They were asked questions about what they thought about rainfall. Teachers showed them the graph and explained how it would be used. Teacher also explained that rainfall would be measured in centimetres. The same was shown on the measuring containers meant to measure the rain. The steps were as follows:

1. Children were asked to 'Guesstimate' how much the rainfall would be. (For older children)
2. The containers were numbered as per the numbers assigned to the children. 
3. Children placed the measurement containers in the outdoor where they felt the rain drops would fall.
4. The next day the children took their glasses, looked at the rainwater collected in the container, and used the centimetre scale marked outside to understand the rainfall level.
5. The children used raindrops to mark on the graph their measurements of 1 / 2 / 3... centimetres of rain as per their observation.

Integrated learning:

Children also learnt about planting seeds and how to tend to them. After digging, and planting the seeds, they waited for the rain to see their little saplings grow. Children then documented their learning by way of drawing about it.

Overall, this has been a fantastic project. It allowed us to learn from the children quite a lot. Children showed that they had great levels of attention since this was an activity that they enjoyed doing. Their curiosity is awakened and we can see children applying their recent measurement skills in class. Their vocabulary about measurement has widened. Rain is no longer abstract and we have been able to translate their learning into concrete terms. What a great way to integrate math with nature!

We will keep updating this post with all the future observations in the days to come too!

Really happy with this project and we welcome ideas from all the readers too for more projects that we can take up. This project can easily be done at home too.

Enjoy learning in the rain!

Credits: Deborah J. Stewart from http://www.teachpreschool.org