Weather Words in English: Vocabulary and Examples for Kids

Practice on screen

Look at the picture or number and choose the right English word. Ten questions each round.

How to teach it

1. 1. Look out of the window

   Each morning go to the window with the child and ask, "What is the weather like today?" The child answers with a word or a sentence: "It is cloudy." Do it every day for a week and write the answers in a simple table.

2. 2. Make a weather wheel

   Cut a paper circle and draw a sun, a cloud, rain and snow in four parts. Fix an arrow with a paper fastener. Spin the arrow and say the weather together: "It is rainy." The child can also make a new wheel with more pictures.

3. 3. Rain sounds and wind sounds

   Make the sounds of weather with your hands and voice: finger taps for rain, a low whoosh for wind. The child closes their eyes, listens and says the word. Then the child makes the sound and you guess in English.

4. 4. What do we need?

   Show a weather picture and ask what to take: "It is rainy. What do we need?" The child picks an umbrella from a small pile of objects. Do the same for sun, snow and wind, and name each object in a full sentence.

5. 5. Weather puppet show

   With a sock puppet or a toy, give a pretend weather report: "Good morning. Today it is windy and cold." The child then becomes the weather reporter and tells a stuffed animal what the weather is. Use real weather or invent it.

6. 6. Draw the four seasons

   Fold a sheet into four parts. For each season the child draws the typical weather, a person in suitable clothes, and writes or says a sentence. This joins weather words to seasons and to the clothes words the child already knows.

Common mistakes

• Saying "I am sunny" or "it makes sun"

  For weather, English uses it as the subject: "It is sunny," "It is cold," "It is raining." Wrong: "Today is making sun." Wrong: "I am sunny." Right: "It is sunny today." Use I am hot only when you talk about your own body.

• Mixing the noun and the adjective

  Use the adjective after it is: "It is rainy" or "It is snowy." Use the noun with other words: "I see rain." Wrong: "It is rain today." Right: "It is rainy today" or "It is raining." Do the same with wind and windy.

• Writing weather as whether

  Weather is the sun, rain and wind outside. Whether is a different word that means if. They sound the same, so children often mix up the spelling. Write weather when you talk about rain, snow and sun.

• Spelling the -y words

  To make an adjective, add -y to the noun: rain becomes rainy, cloud becomes cloudy, wind becomes windy. With sun and fog the last letter doubles: sunny, foggy. Teach these as a small group and check them in writing.

• Counting rain and snow

  Rain and snow are not counted words. Say "a lot of rain" and "some snow." Wrong: "two rains" and "a snow." For one drop, say a raindrop, and for one flake, say a snowflake.