Doing weather activities with your students can be a great way to get them interested in science and meteorology. After all, weather affects all of us everyday in so many ways.
Weather is something that kids can easily see and experience, making it very easy to keep their interest. Young students, and older ones too, love to get hands-on with their learning and teaching weather is an easy way to achieve that. See this earlier post for a free writing prompt specifically about winter!
The topic of weather also makes it easy to incorporate different subjects. Math, science and literacy can all be interwoven into activities that are fun and engaging for students. Learning is just so much easier when it’s fun!
Science weather activities
You can’t talk about weather without talking about the water cycle. Students can see evidence of it every day. So having a hands-on way to show them how it works is a must.
Water Cycle in a Bag
This activity uses simple materials. All you need is a gallon-size plastic baggie, a sunny window, some water, blue food coloring, packing tape and a permanent marker.
Use the marker to draw the water cycle on the outside of the bag. Keep it simple by just showing water, sun and clouds and maybe some arrows.
Add a little bit of water to the bag – 2 or 3 inches – and then color it with the blue food coloring. Seal the bag shut TIGHTLY! Be doubly sure of this by taping over the opening.
Now tape the bag to a sunny window by using a strip of tape across the top of the bag. If the weather is really warm, things will start happening fairly quickly. If it’s cloudy, or if you want to speed things up a bit, you can use a blow dryer on the bag. Just don’t hold it too close or the bag will start to melt.
As the water heats up, it will start to evaporate. Since it’s sealed in the bag, the water vapor will rise up, causing the humidity level inside the bag to increase. After a time, the air in the bag will become saturated, causing it to condense onto the sides of the bag and then “rain” down.
Math and Literacy
Using weather as a writing prompt will help your students practice with their observational skills and you can also incorporate some math skills with graphing. And what better way to include real-life learning that your students can use every day?
A fun and easy way to get your kids writing is to have them make weather journals. These can be as simple or complex as you’d like them to be. A simple way to start is to use a sheet of folded construction paper for the cover and back. Students can decorate this with drawings, pictures from magazines, or stickers.
Inside you can place some blank or lined paper and then staple the folded end to hold it all together. Have students write about the weather each day, their favorite kind of weather, the seasons, etc. It’s also fun to set up a grid to observe and record the weather every day. This can be included in the journal as well. Check out this free resource that includes a tally sheet and a grid for graphing the daily weather.
Math, science and literacy bundle
If you’d like a resource that includes weather activities for all three of these subject areas, I’ve created a resource that you may like.
This resource is an integrated unit that is wide-ranging and will be useful for students at all levels. Activities include posters, vocabulary, thinking maps, weather discussion cards, as well as games and puzzles.
This resource will make it easy for you to plan your whole weather unit!
Have you done any fun weather activities? We’d love to hear about them!
