In our weather unit, part of the objectives are to learn forecasting skills. We have a morning news program that kids do and we started doing the "Weather Watch" everyday for the school. If you don't have this--you can do it for just your classroom. I made a "script" that they fill in the blnaks on each day and they can find all the info on www.weather.com and by observing what is happening outside. It had things about temperature, cloud cover, precipitation, tomorrow's forecast, etc. It was their favorite part of the unit and they understand fronts, tempertaure indicators, cloud indicators, and MUCH more!
We also design "cloud Charts" for all the different types of clouds--making them out of cotton balls and putting them at the appropriate level on a long sheet of bulletin board paper. We hung them all around the room and the kids really knew which clouds went where!
As part of our unit, we had to learn the water cycle and we did this by designing our own water cycles--the kids studied what happens in the water cycle and then had to recreate that in the classroom--I got very scientific ones (bottle on the windowsill) and very creative ones ( a silent play)! It was lots of fun either way!!
Hope I helped! Good luck!
Hi!
We did a weather unit back in December/January.
Our first grade team ordered these cute thermometers at Oriental Trading Co. that the kids could make, which were shaped as snowman, I put a windsock out in the morning and talked about wind direction, we also had a large thermometer out and students would make predictions about the weather and we would check it before morning and afternoon recess. There also is a really good book called Thundercakes by Patricia Polacco. I read that and they wrote about what type of weather they liked and didn't like. In the morning, we would sing a weather song...
What's the weather like today, like today, like today?
What's the weather like today, today is ________.
This is sung to London Bridge is Falling Down!
I alternate years of having the weatherman from our local newsstation come to our classroom and my kids taking a field trip to the nearest weather center.
Each child has to come up with 5 questions and I submit them to the speaker ahead of time. Last visit, we watched video of 5 tornadoes we had in Myrtle Beach, only 15 miles from us!
The NOAA website has an education section. It's wonderful. They also have some neat free printables.
We live near the beach so I can tie in weather and erosion/environment.
We keep a daily weather calendar, date,sky cover and graph it monthly.
We walked around campus to study cloud types and had the kids draw them and then they would write a funny story.
We're in a hurricane area, so we do alot of research on hurrican names, etc. Again, use NOAA for weather information!!!
I made an interactive weather bulletin board. I set it up as a five day week Mon-Fri. Each day we put symbols on the day of what the weather was and what the temperature was at 2:00 p.m. each day. I had thermometer that we colored daily for the temp, we had a flag symbol for the wind, sun, clouds, rain. I also had monthly calendar that we put symbols on to keep track of sun, rain, clouds and snow for the month. I tacked the weather report from the internet each day also on the days. We had a thermometer out side for the kids to read, a rain gauge, and a wind stick (stick with crepe paper streamer) Each day we would gather our information and then attach it to the board.
"Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs" is such a fun book. The kids love to pretend it can "rain" food. You could have them brainstorm other things they'd like to have fall from the sky, and have them draw a picture of it, or list them on the board and have them copy the list.
I did this next activity with older students, but you could adapt it for first graders. I have a thunderstorm sounds CD, one of those relaxation soundtracks. I played it for the class with the lights off and their heads down for about five minutes. I told them to visualize the kind of weather that would be happening with the sounds. I turned the CD off, and they wrote a descriptive paragraph of a weather scene, based on the sounds. You could do the same, and have them draw a scene instead of writing it.
In my preschool class we have been working on weather for a week now. Every year I have the kids create a weather book. The book is based on Brown Bear Brown Bear. For example: Clouds, Clouds what do you see? I see a rain looking at me. I write clouds cloud at the top and the other line at bottom of the page. For clouds I use blue paper and the kids use white paint to make clouds by squishing the paint on the page. I usually use clouds, rain, wind, sun, snow, lightning and rainbow depending on where you live. It is really nice to have a book for each child to take home and we can read them as a class at the end. For rain I use a blue bingo dabber and blue glitter, wind I have the kids make kites, or leaves falling, sun and rainbows they paint or draw on the page. Good luck.
Our school district has purchased kits for us to use when we teach science. Some of the activities include:
-Measuring temperature several times a day and finding a pattern
-Finding the difference between temp. in the sunlight and in the shadows
-Creating windsocks and finding a pattern of wind direction
-The water cycle
-Cloud types
-Precipitation types
-Charting daily weather (sunny, cloudy, partly cloudy, rain, snow, etc.)
-Weather forecasting (remember this should include how hot/cold it is, what is in the air (precip), and how the air is moving (wind direction)
-Thunderstorms/Lightning
-Tornadoes (we have a lot of those in MO)
-I know there's more, but my brain is tired. I hope that helps. Let me know if you need anything...I love sci.!
I had my students start a weather notebook in September, then every other week we would go outside and write observations about how the weather had changed things. It has been fun watching what the children notice as the weather changes, (We are right near a golf course. One of my little ones noticed the golfers now had sweaters on when we got into autumn!)
Since it is now Spring you may want them to write about their observations on how they can tell Winter is leaving.
Good Luck!
Lots of fun activities for weather-
General activies: Read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and then write your own class book version.
Water cycle: Use a pot of boiling water and a cold pot lid to demonstrate the water cycle.
Clouds: Read It Looked Like Spilt Milk and then make white paint blot pictures. Kids can add sentence starter-It looked like.... (another fun class book!)
Tornadoes: Use a salad spinner with round pieces of paper inside. Drop red, blue and yellow paint on the paper, close lid and spin away! Cool spin-art design helps to explain forces inside a tornado.
Wind: Create a chart of the wind force scale and then graph each day's wind strength for a month. (Great for the month of March!) OR read Gilberto and the Wind. Then list wind's helpful and harmful effects. (Another great class book.) OR Make a wind vane out of a spool, wooden dowel, and paper.
Rainbows: Create a rainbow with a shallow bowl of water, a mirror, and some sunshine. OR Make rainbow jello using a small layer of each rainbow color - add a Cool Whip cloud on top! OR teach the colors of the spectrum with a funny character called ROY G BIV. We make a face and use paper the colors of the spectrum for hair.
Combine the two-- weather and graphing.
Attach an outdoor thermometer to the outside of your classroom window.(Buy a thermometer with suction cups) Have students check temp in the AM AND PM. and record. Graph* the temps.
Bring in newspaper. A newspaper that has the colorful weather page. Students can pick a favorite city and record low and high temp for 4-5 days. Students can then graph* temp info.
* Students can do bar graphs or broken line graphs.
* Another interesting activity is to make a bar graph and a broken line graph using the same info.
One thing I did with my science summer class last summer was I collected some rain in a jar and put tap water in another jar. We compared the two. Then I took 2 coffee filters, put them in a funnel, and poured the rain water through them. I repeated this with the tap water. You should see what comes out of the rain water...YUCK!
I like to have my students keep a journal on the weather. In this journal, they make predictions, record the actual temperature and conditions, compare them to the weather forecast in the paper and on the local T.V. News. Using journals incorporates the Scientific Method without even thinking about it. For some classes I write the specific information I want and ask them to include it in their Journal. For others, I pre-assemble the journal or buy small notebooks for the project.
For cloud ideas, go to the library and get some books on the different kinds of clouds and have the children recreate the cloud forms using cotton on construction paper and display. You can do this in groups or individuals. I think you said this is second grade, if it is older sometimes have the students write a short description with each type of cloud. Good Luck.