Our Homeschooling Expedition

Jun. 5, 2007

Weather Unit Study

The kids will keep records of all science experiments and activities. When they take notes they should include what fact the experiment showed them. I’ll take pictures of them conducting the experiments for their portfolios. They’ll record any words that are new and look up the definitions.

Lesson 1 – General weather overview

Books:

Guide to Weather by Ross Reynolds

The Weather Book by Michael Oard

Weather thematic unit downloaded from School Express newsletter.

Also read from The Usborne Internet linked Science Encyclopedia pgs. 192-193

Activity:

Keep track of the weather. For the younger kids I bought a simple daily chart where they pick the picture that shows what today weather is is. So if it is sunny outside they will pick the card with a sun and the word sunny to put on the chart.

For the older kids they will keep a note book page with the temperature high, low, and average. They will also record the humidity, air pressure, wind, sunrise, sunset, clouds, and any precipitation. I have a weather station I purchased that they get some of this information from. They can also go to the local news channel website and get this information from the weather report.

Lesson 2 – The Sun’s Effect on Weather

http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/causes_other.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_sun_angle_on_climate

http://library.thinkquest.org/C0112425/child_sun_1.htm

Experiments:

This is the form I will have the older kids use to record their experiments on.

http://chasesc.com/CHASEScienceExperimentForm.pdf

This is the form I will have the younger kids use. I will have them draw a picture in the boxes for each step.

http://notebookingpages.com/files/Science_Experiment_Pages_2.pdf

Experiment 1 - You will need 2 soda bottles, black paint, white paint, play dough, and 2 thermometers. Paint one bottle black and one white then let them dry. Next plug each one with the play dough and stick a thermometer in. You will then put them in a sunny area and take a temperature reading every 20 minutes. Record the data. What conclusions can you make from the data you collected? Is there a difference between the black one and the white one? Why?

Experiment 2 – This is a pretty simple experiment the only things you need are an outdoor thermometer and a sunny day with no clouds. Place the thermometer in a sunny area and record the temperature every hour. You will need to start this early in the morning and stop after the sun has been down for a few hours. What did you notice about the temperature throughout the day? What reason do you think this occurred? What have we learned? Why?

Experiment 3 - Easy Sun experiments (pick one or all to do)

http://www.bananasinc.org/uploads/1134508314.pdf

Experiment 4 - What your slant

http://astro.uchicago.edu/cara/southpole.edu/angle.html

Coloring Pages:

Sun coloring page

http://www.first-school.ws/t/sun2.htm

Different Sun coloring pages

http://www.coloringcastle.com/sun_coloring_pages.html

Lesson 3 – Wind and Air Pressure

Books:

Feel the Wind by Arthur Dorros (ages 4-8)

Wind and Air Pressure by Alan Rodgers and Angella Streluk

What’s happening inside highs and lows?

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/tg/whighlow/whighlow.htm

What is wind?

http://www.weatherwizkids.com/wind1.htm

Simple explanation of what makes wind.

Forces and wind an online meteorology guide (best for older students)

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/fw/home.rxml

Here you can learn about wind and the Beaufort scale.

http://www.hko.gov.hk/education/edu01met/wxobs/ele_winde.htm#q1

Activities:

What’s in the wind?

http://www.weatherwizkids.com/wind.htm

Global wind patterns

http://kids.earth.nasa.gov/archive/nino/global.html

How air pressure affects you. This is a very nice lesson that explains air pressure and has some simple experiments and discussion questions on the side for the kids to do.

Measuring wind speed

http://www.miamisci.org/hurricane/windscale.html

Make an anemometer

http://sln.fi.edu/tfi/units/energy/dixie.html

Make a wind streamer

http://www.miamisci.org/hurricane/windstreamer.html

Experiments:

Experiment 1 – Do the second one on this page.

http://www.fatlion.com/science/airpressure.html

Experiment 2 – The pressure is on. Is an experiment to show the force of air pressure.

Experiment 3 – This experiment will show how hot and cold affects air.

Lesson 4 – Clouds

Books:

The Cloud Book by Tomie de Paola

The Clouds Above by Jordan Crane (fiction)

Clouds by Trudi Strain Trueit

Understanding clouds and fog

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wfog.htm

Cloud types – common cloud classifications

Simple explanation of the 3 major cloud types and what clouds are made of.

http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric/weather/pricloud/index.html

You can learn about clouds here.

Here you can look at some really cool pictures of clouds.

http://pals.agron.iastate.edu/carlson/main.html

Learn about clouds with this interactive site.

http://www.scienceclass.com/skyworks/sky_demo.html

Experiments:

Experiment 1 - Home made clouds

http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/14.html

Experiment 2 - Cloud in a bottle (has a pretty cool video demonstration with explanation)

http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/00000030

Activities:

The complete book of science gr. 5-6 pgs. 216-218

Cloud finder – observe and predict

This is an activity to use for preK – 1^st.

Using pictures of the different types of clouds have the children paint pictures of the different types of clouds. Then have them record the information about each type of cloud and what it predicts the weather will be. Or you could do this second variation. Cirrus clouds are a feathery type white cloud that appears in streaks across the sky. The child could glue white feathers in the fashion of this type of cloud and record the info. For cumulus clouds which look like puffy, white, low clouds they could use cotton balls. For Stratus clouds which look wide, often gray, low clouds they could use dryer lint or gray felt and then record the information.

Cloud activity pages downloaded from School Express newsletter.

Lesson 5 – Humidity/Precipitation

I plan on doing the water cycle lap book at this point because it does a fair job of explaining where rain comes from. I will then add the following activities to make it weather related.

Learn about humidity here. There is also an exercise to measure dew point.

http://www.wildwildweather.com/humidity.htm

Build a psychrometer

Here you can learn about the different forms of precipitation

Precipitation map

Lessons 6 – Storms

Books:

The Magic School Bus inside a Hurricane

The Big Storm by Bruce Hiscock

Tsunamis by A to Z reading (downloaded during teacher appreciation week)

Severe Weather by A to Z reading

Hurricanes by A to Z reading