Read the Weekly Forecast

A five-day forecast strip runs across the top of this 1st grade page, Monday to Friday, each day named and each carrying one weather symbol. On the sheet shown it is snow, a thunderstorm, sun, rain and cloud, all five different. Beneath the strip sit three question cards, and each one repeats the five day names as chips to circle. The questions ask which day is snowy, which is rainy and which is sunny, so the child reads the strip three times over.

This is the family's first reading-for-information page, and the fact that no two days share a symbol is what makes each question have exactly one answer. The child is not naming a symbol, which they did on the matching sheet, but searching a table for one — a different act, and the one a real forecast asks for. Reading the day names is half the work: the chips are in calendar order, so a child who finds the symbol still has to count across to name the day.

One sheet, five days, three questions. It is quick, so it suits the end of a weather lesson or a warm-up before the weekly chart. If your class has already kept that chart, ask the same three questions of their own week afterwards — the answers are rarely as tidy, which is a useful thing for a six-year-old to find out.