Weather Unit

Wind Exploration

The children put these objects in front of a fan to see if the air moved them or if they fell to the ground.

I gave the students a tray with a car, a straw, some clay, some paper and some toothpicks. Their assignment was to move the car without touching it. I thought they would make a sail to move it (such as the one on the right), but some just tilted the tray and others just blew on the car. Just proves that everyone problem-solves in their own way!

Water Cycle Bracelet

We made a water cycle bracelet from colored beads to help us remember. The rain (light blue) falls down on the grass (green). It forms puddles (dark blue). The sun (yellow) comes out and dries up or evaporates (clear) the puddles. The air is filled with moisture and this causes a cloud (white) to form. Then the cycle starts all over again. If I were to make this again, I would use plain colored cording for the bracelet.

Prior to this activity I had done a demonstration of how rain occurs by boiling water on a hot plate. Then I held a pan filled with ice cubes over the boiling water, causing condensation to occur. Soon, water (rain) began dripping from the bottom of the pan. I gave a simplified explanation. that this is what happens when the warm air from the earth meets the cold air in the sky.

Water Cycle Demonstation

We used white packing pieces to illustrate "rain" when we demonstrated the water cycle. The boy on the left (evaporation) is filling up the hands of the boy on the right. His hands represent a cloud and the packing pieces represent drops of moisture.

When his hands get too full of moisture drops, the drops overflow and "rain". Then the cycle starts all over again when evaporation occurs (the first boy starts filling up the "cloud" (hands) of the other boy.

The children illustrated this cycle on this poster.

We made a wind kite by folding a paper plate in half and gluing streamers inside. We took them outside to watch the wind blow the streamers.

We kept track of the weather every day for a week on our Weather Watcher's Report.

Predictable Chart

Our predictable chart sentence began with, "The wind blew..." We read it daily.

For a center, I wrote each child's sentence on a strip and cut it apart. They had to put it back together in order, glue it to the paper and draw a picture.

The kite in this book moves from page to page to illustrate position words.

This was a center activity. The children had to find stamps with pictures beginning with the sounds  of the letters in the word SPRING and stamp them below the letters. This activity was found at http://www.abcschoolhouse.com

This is an example of our March Kidwriting.

It's raining cats and dogs!

The raindrop above shows the cat, but the other side has a dog. The children let the drop fall and graphed which side was showing when it hit the floor.

This is the kite project from TLC Art.

Lion and Lamb Cut and Paste Art Pattern

This cloud had rainbow crepe paper strips glued to it. The children also drew some raindrops and a sun on the cloud to remember that you need rain, clouds and sun to make a rainbow.

To make a windmill open the top of a cardboard half gallon milk carton. Wrap red construction paper around the carton and tape. Cut out a windmill pattern and use a brad to attach it to the inside of the carton. Fold the top of the carton back down and staple shut. The tulips actually stand out a few inches in front of the windmill. Make a template of the green "grass" with three flower "stems" attached--this is 12 inches wide. Cut out three tulips and glue to the stems. Glue the "grass" to each side of the covered windmill milk carton about halfway down the side.

This is a little difficult to see due to the background. The students painted a paper plate (we made green or yellow). The plate was cut in half and the top half of one was slit and the bottom half of the other was slit up the center. The plates were put together to make a 3-D umbrella. A handle was cut and the kids drew 4 raindrops that were attached to each corner with string to make an umbrella mobile.

I saw something similar to this on another website--sorry, can't remember whose! The cloud caption says, "April Showers Bring.." and a mud puddle is at the bottom with footsteps leading to the tub.