Weather Wheel

Today was the perfect day for Charlie and I to finish up our Weather Wheel because it rained, hailed, and shined today - and the makings of a rainbow just might be in the works!

Isn't it cute? By the way, I totally stole this idea from my friend, Karen.

This is Karen's Weather Wheel. Her pictures are so much cuter than mine - especially the way she depicted the wind. And, the little umbrella is utterly darling. Karen got this idea from a book that she owns, The Complete Resource Book for Toddler and Twos by Pam Schiller. So I guess Karen and I both stole it.

Now I bet you'd like to make one yourself! It is the perfect no-sew, easy project for little hands. Here's how you do it:

Materials Needed

*multiple colors of felt

*cardboard circle from frozen or take-and-bake pizza

*small piece of heavy-weight paper (like a manilla file folder)

*Sharpie marker

*lots-o-glue

*ribbon

*embroidery or other large needle

*brass brad (is that how you spell it?)

First you draw out eight different pictures of weather conditions using your Sharpie and felt. You can cut them out very precisely as Karen beautifully did, or less attractively like I did (laziness). I made these after my boys were in bed (and while I was watching a ridiculous amount of HGTV). Charlie is kind of crazy when it comes to Sharpie markers; we've had some really close calls. So I decided to do this portion on my own, but if you have an older, Sharpie-responsible child, this would be a great little activity to do together! Imagine how sweet child-drawn weather conditions would be!

Then use your Sharpie and felt to make labels for each of your weather conditions and cut them out.
Next use your cardboard pizza circle and Sharpie to trace a circle of felt, then cut the felt circle out.

Divide the felt circle into eight pie-piece sections. I am very aware that mine looks like a basketball. This is because Charlie's favorite color is orange, and also because of the suspected brain damage I sustained from being subjected to an insane amount of NCAA basketball tournament games over the past three weeks. I seriously need to take up knitting - otherwise I have no idea how I will survive sports seasons with three males in the house.

And next is GLUE! Cover the cardboard pizza circle with Elmer's Glue All (not the school glue - Karen says that doesn't work so well).

Then smooth the felt basketball onto the top of the glued circle.

Now's the fun part - glueing all of the weather pictures onto the board. You need to really glue them - I'm talking LOTS of glue. Felt on felt requires a three-year-old's idea of enough glue.

When you think you've put enough glue onto each felt piece, go ahead and put some more glue on them. Then smoosh each piece down onto the board. If the glue goes through the felt weather picture and gets your hand wet, then you know you've applied just enough glue.

A matching game - this just keeps getting better! Ask your child to match each label to its corresponding weather condition picture. Then glue those puppies down, too.

Ta-da! Almost done!

Make an arrow out of tagboard (I used a manilla file folder) and trace it onto some felt. Cut your felt arrow out and glue it to your tagboard arrow. Let dry. Then use an embroidery needle to poke a hole through the end of the arrow.

Use the embroidery needle to poke another hole through the center of the weather board and near the top of the board. Thread a ribbon through the needle and pull it through the top of the board hole. Knot the ribbon. Then use your brass brad (mine is a star - so cute from A Muse, which is a fabulous paper/card store I just discovered) to attach the arrow to the center of the weather board.

Finally, hang your Weather Wheel up! I hung mine right above Charlie's chair at our kitchen table. I'm sure Marcus will appreciate it, too - but he's at the stage right now where he'll just smear his mac-n-cheese fingers all over it if it is hung within his reach. Charlie is super excited about his Weather Wheel. I am super excited about the science geekiness he is beginning to embrace - check out his current favorite placemat: the periodic table of elements! Those geeky science kids always end up being the coolest adults - I should know, I married one.

Have fun making your Weather Wheel! And I hope you arrow points to "sunny" more often than not!