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.

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.