Early development

The Changing Weather sensory story

Primary

Communication and language

﻿Hello. My name is Kat and I am very happy to be your teacher today. We are going to read a story about the weather. The first time I'm going to read the story through with lots of tips and tricks of things that you can try with your learner to engage them in the story materials. The second time, I'll read through with minimal adult language for you and the learner to enjoy the story. For this lesson, you will need, some ice wrapped in a tea towel or cloth a sieve or colander a jug of water, some tissue paper, some perfume, a torch and some tin foil. Press pause once you get things ready. Let's get ready. Find a quiet, comfortable space away from distractions. Gather your resources and have them nearby. Make sure you and your learner are comfortable. Press pause once you get everything ready. It's time to, look, listen and learn. Now it's time to start our story The way we look changes And the way we feel. The weather is always changing. In autumn, it's very, very rainy. First show your learner our key sign, which is rain. Rain Now what we need is a jug of water and a colander. I also have a tray to pour the water into. This activity is really good for exploration and initiation. So first you just want to pour the water through the colander. To create a rain type effect for your learner. Now, first you can just let that learner to explore, the water in the tray and watch the water falling like rain. Then you can build on this activity to introduce some initiation skills. So what you want to do is hold the water up in the air and you want to model initiation skills for the learner. So you want to say one, two, three, and see if the learner can either vocalise, maybe use the word, go, maybe reach towards the colander in the water in order to initiate that rain experience again. Repeat this as many times as you feel that your learner is interested and even maybe pass over the colander or the water jug to your learner to allow them to then explore the activity themselves with more independence. In winter, it's very, very cold. For this part of the activity, our keyword will be cold. Cold What you want to do is get the ice and put it in your tray. Now you might want to cover the ice with a thin tea towel so that the learner doesn't get any ice related injuries. Can still feel how cold it is through a nice thin tea towel. And then you don't have to worry about any chilblains. Then what you want to do is you just want to encourage your learner to explore the ice so, model what you want them to do by exploring it yourself first, and then you want to pass it over to them. Maybe you might want to hand over hand, support them to touch the ice. Maybe they'll just jump in and do it themselves either is fine. And this is really just about exploring and encouraging that exploration. When the learner shows response to how cold it is, you can say, cold, and model again that key sign and just let them explore it for as long as they are interested in, as long as you're getting a nice response and reaction from them If they don't like it and they don't want to touch the cold, that's fine. Again, you could turn that into a bit of a game and you could show them that you're touching it. And then saying cold, cold, cold. In spring, we see lots of flowers. The key word for this part of the story is, flowers. Flowers. So to create the stimuli for this part of the story, I've just ripped up some tissue paper that we had around the house and put it in the tray. So you can use any kind of paper, tissue paper, tissues, card, anything like that. and then we're just going to spray it with some perfumes some body spray anything that you have around the house that has a nice floral scent. Spray on and should absorb all of the smell, and then we're really just going to encourage the learner to explore the tissue paper petals. So encourage that sense of smell. Maybe hold it near to the learner, maybe model it yourself and show what your expectation is that they smell it and explore the smell. What you can also do is you can create a game with this tissue paper so you can sprinkle it and then you create also that visual sensation. And if your learner enjoys this, what you want to do is kind of build in some initiation. So hold it up show the first time round. sprinkle sprinkle sprinkle sprinkle sprinkle. And then what you want to do is to repeat, but pause just before you sprinkle to try and encourage that initiation. So hold up in the air and say, one, two, three, and see if the learner can verbalise, reach towards the tissue paper, look towards the tissue paper, show some signs of initiation through smiling, perhaps holding their breath in anticipation and then you want to go sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle to reward that initiation that they've shown you. And in summer, we see lots of sunshine. For this part of the story, our keyword is going to be sunshine, sunshine. So for this part of the story, we're going to create, create a visual experience for the learner. So that's, again, we've used smell, now we're going to use sight. So you're going to get your torch and you're going to get a length of tinfoil like this which is great for reflecting light. So we're just going to tear a bit off, going to get the torch and we're going to just sparkle it onto the tinfoil to create light. Now, what we want to encourage the learner to do, is explore this, try crinkling it, making different shapes to see what that does to the light, it should fragment the light a bit creating a really nice visual experience. We also want to encourage some initiation skills. So once you've captured the learner's attention, once they're really interested in looking at the light, you might want to try switching it off and see if they can initiate to see some more. So, that would be just creating the engaging experience and then pausing and saying, do you want to see some more? and wait to see if the learner responds, perhaps a vocalisation, perhaps a sign, perhaps a word, and then you're going to create the experience again for them to then see some more of what they've enjoyed looking at. So explore this for as long as you like with the learner, this might really captivate them, or they might not be as interested, that's fine and respond to what you think your learner is interested in and continue the activities that they really enjoy. What, is your, favourite season? Spring, summer, autumn, or winter? This last part can be a really lovely opportunity to support your learner, to practise making choices and expressing preferences, which is a really important part of communication. So with the resources that you've already gathered, present a choice between two. So here I've got the petals, from spring and the sunshine from summer. And what you want to do is just show them both to your learner and see which one they express a preference for. This might look like reaching and touching. It might look like looking towards, It might look like vocalising and any response from your learner that indicates that they would rather look at either one of these, you then want to explore that one further with them. So, if they look towards or reach towards the petals, we then repeat that part of the story with them. This is a really great way of building up that expressing preferences and showing them that when they communicate a preference, they then get to enjoy and engage with that thing that they've chosen. I'm now going to read through the story with minimal adult language, for you to enjoy with your learner. Now, it's time for our story. The way we look changes and the way we feel. The weather is always changing. In autumn, it is very, very rainy. In winter, It is very, very cold. In spring, We see lots of flowers. And in summer we see lots of sunshine. What is your favourite season? Spring, summer, autumn, or winter? To make this activity easier, try minimise in the language you are using with each slide and use keywords instead. Spend longer on each activity to allow the learner to engage and explore on their own terms. To make it harder, repeat the story a few times and see if the learner can predict what is going to happen next. Show the learner the images and slides and see if they can lead the activity themselves. There are lots of weather related ideas to try. You go muddy puddle jumping in the rain or collect and make leaf prints, or press flowers for an arts and craft activity. If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

The Changing Weather sensory story

The Changing Weather sensory story

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

Lesson slides

Lesson details

Key learning points

Equipment

Supervision

Licence

Lesson video