Snow, Sun, Rain, Wind!

Our weather unit felt particularly relevant this month, as we experienced all four seasons and every type of weather within 24 hours! Our crazy Mid-Atlantic weather brought us days with chilly starts and toasty afternoons, followed by snowy evenings. Throw in high winds and tornado warnings, and we had the M2 weather unit well-represented…talk about experiential learning!

Tools of weather - We started by introducing the tools used to measure weather.  Students explored a backyard weather station, an anemometer, and mercury, Galileo and digital thermometers. They also saw a weather vane, a rain gauge, and a windsock while learning the purpose of each.

Water Cycle - Next we looked at how water circulates through our atmosphere. A fun way to teach this complex topic is through song....ask your child to sing the water cycle song that begins, “Water travels in a cycle yes it does!” 

Clouds - We took a close look at those puffy white formations that predict what kind of day it will be. Your students were invited to make their own “clouds” out of cotton balls.

Rainbows: Everyone loves a rainbow! Your students learned how water droplets combined with light refraction put on this spectacular display and we sprayed water into the sunlight outside to create our own rainbow! Did you know that if you see a double rainbow, one rainbow one will be in the correct color order (ROYGBIV) and the other will be in reverse (VIBGYOR)?

Storms: Who’s afraid of thunder and lightning? Not your students now that they have a better understanding of how energy and intra-cloud friction create storms. The class experiments replicating the static and electrical charges needed to make lightning and thunder fascinated the children.

Floods/Drought: Since the ideas of floods and drought can seem abstract, I used simple demonstrations to show the causes and effects of both. We also built a symbolic town with toy cars and then “made it rain” in order to demonstrate how powerful water is - strong enough to lift vehicles! Then we used a drought-stricken house plant to demonstrate what happens when a plant is deprived of water.