Enter: The Reid School’s new weather bear! A weather bear is a fun addition to our daily calendar time as we track the weather day by day and practice putting the correct clothing on Berry the Bear.

When my husband was young, his mother taught preschool. One thing he mentioned remembering was a weather bear in their basement classroom. A few months after we had a conversation about his childhood weather bear, his mother sent it to me!

But after 30 years of life, Grandma’s Weather Bear was definitely past his prime. The seal of the lamination no longer was tight. The Velcro tape had come off the back, and the sticky residue had somehow left stains that seeped through to the visible side of the bear. It was time for Grandma’s Weather Bear to retire.

Setting Up the Weather Bear

We call our weather bear “Berry.” I bought a large set of bear plus clothes clip art to dress our dear Berry, created by Teacher Laura. We printed off our favorite clothes (sized just right for Berry). I planned to use small Velcro dots (affiliate link) to attach the clothing, and felt to attach the bear to the felt board. Magnets could also work for this, if I had a magnet board!

I decided to crerate her by printing on light fabric transfer paper  and ironing it directly on to felt. I  printed a lot of clothes for Berry. Right now I keep her clothes in a small box next to the weather bear board.

As my kids and I put Berry together, I started to thinking about you, my blog readers! While I obviously can’t include all the clothing options for all of you (WAY too many!), I wanted to share some with you. This free download for blog list subscribers includes the weather bear and clothes for five different kinds of weather.

Extending the Learning with the Weather Bear

With my preschooler and her Spanish preschool class, I also developed some more for weather learning fun. I include seasons and weather cards (in both English and Spanish!), cards to practice the vocabulary for clothing, and also some places we can use to sort clothes: what do we wear to the beach? What do we wear to the mountain top? What do we wear in the pool?

In my Spanish class we also played listening games. I described the clothes of a child in a photograph, as well as the location, and they had to figure out which picture i was describing. It was amazing how much Spanish those little preschoolers have learned in the past 6 months!

I put all these items (the weather bear and clothes, the photograph discussion images, and the vocabulary/weather cards) together for those who would like a more complete weather set for their home or school. Get the full Weather Bear set at my Shop or TeachersPayTeachers.

Whether you decide to buy the more complete product or you simply enjoy the subscriber freebie, I hope you and your kids have a fun time tracking the weather in your school or home!

Do you track daily weather with your toddler or preschooler?

(Note: If you wish to have more clothing options, purchase Teacher Laura’s more complete image set here.)