Exploring Tornados with Little Kids
Practice creative thinking and fine motor skills while exploring tornados with little kids. You’re definitely going to want to add this activity to your next preschool exploring weather theme.
This week we’re learning about storms, so our topics are thunderstorms, hail, hurricanes, floods, and of course tornados too. Today’s Exploring Tornados creative activity was a wonderful way to demonstrate twirling tornados in a way that both little kids could understand while practicing important fine motor skills at the same time.
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A huge thanks to Experience Early Learning (formerly Mother Goose Time) for providing us with their Experience Preschool curriculum for free in exchange for sharing our honest and authentic stories resulting from our personal experiences. It’s been such a huge blessing to us! As always, my opinions on awesome stuff for little kids are 100% my own.
Tornados occur when warm and cold air start to rotate and twist together. Usually a tornado is not able to be seen until it starts picking up dirt and debris that form a visible, funnel-like vortex.


Exploring Tornados
What you’ll need
- Ice Cube Tray
- Watery Paint
- Paintbrushes
- Paper Plate
Here’s how to do it
- Use a clean brush to model how to make swirly motions on the paper plate.
- Explain that this is how a tornado moves.
- Observe how the child tries to recreate this motion with paint on the plate.
- Which colors did she choose? Does she make the circular motion or choose other designs?
I love quick and easy activities like this one. As a homeschool mama, I don’t have tons of time for lesson planning or even prepping materials and that’s what makes using this curriculum so wonderful.
So much is already done for you, which means that you get to focus on the important stuff like spending quality time with your little kids.
Don’t forget to check back if you’re interested in seeing what we’re up to next week with our Weather & Seasons theme from Experience Early Learning (formerly Mother Goose Time).
Looking for more insight & inspiration? Here are the top 10 most popular posts from The Keeper of the Memories. You’re definitely not going to want to miss these!