In this paper we demonstrate how some characteristics of queues with the periodic Poisson arrivals can be approximated by the respective characteristics in queues with Markov modulated input. These Markov modulated queues were recently studied by Regterschot and de Smit (1984). The approximation theorems are given in terms of the weak convergence of some characteristics and their uniform integrability. The approximations are applicable for the following characteristics: mean workload, mean workload at the time of day, mean delay, mean queue size.