Weather Unit Study

Curious kids are natural meteorologists. They notice the weather – its patterns and its unexpected changes. They intuitively know it affects us on the day to day. While looking for a weather unit study, we decided meteorology should be one of the first units we chose for Science Scouts!

We timed the meteorology weather unit study to be completed in spring, because the weather always varies dramatically from one day to the next. In our area, we experienced freezes, thunderstorms, hail, wind advisories, and heat indexes approaching 90 degrees Farenheit, all within the same month! While it made figuring out what to wear each day a little difficult, it allowed us to observe first-hand all the weather concepts we were studying.

While I wanted to emphasize the importance of observing and recording weather in order to study patterns and make predictions, I wanted these activities to be as hands-on as possible. Weather is part of our everyday lives, but some of the concepts are a little abstract for young learners. Our goal was to find straightforward, hands-on experiments that gave them a chance to observe some of these concepts in action.

Here are the activities that were part of the Meteorology Science Scouts unit!

Weather Tracker

Every good weather unit study should involve tracking the weather, because that’s what meteorologists do! Before anything else, we took a morning to learn about what meteorologists do by reading books from our library. Then, we looked at the main symbols meteorologists use on weather forecasts to familiarize ourselves with the images. Using these symbols, the students tracked the weather over the course of the month by drawing the weather symbol for each day.

Make a Rain Gauge

In addition to tracking basic weather conditions, we also made rain gauges to measure rainfall. To keep it simple, we repurposed plastic water bottles for our gauges. By cutting off the top third of the bottle, we turned it upside-down to create a funnel that let the rain fall into the bottle. I had the kids draw inch lines on a piece of painters tape to run up the side of the bottle. These are very light, however, and easily blown over. To keep them upright during rain storms, we set them inside a plastic bucket with rocks around the outside of the bottle to keep it steady.

We had several decent rain events over the month, so the kids were able to fill out quite a few spots on their rain tracking sheets!

Water Cycle in a Bag

The kids were already familiar with the water cycle from discussions we’d had after watching puddles evaporate, but this activity allows them to visualize the whole process in action. Simply fill a Ziploc bag about ⅓ with water and attach to a window that receives direct sunlight for part of the day. The kids were able to watch the water condensate on the sides of the bag before eventually running back down to the bottom when the drops got too heavy.

To take the visual one step further, we drew the scene shown below so the kids could make the connection to how water evaporates from the ground, condenses in the clouds, and eventually falls back to the ground where it runs off into bodies of water.

Sun Prints

This was such a fun way to bring art into the weather unit study! You can find special paper specifically for making sun prints, but we used regular construction paper and it worked just fine. First, we had a discussion about UV light and how it can bleach color from certain materials. Then the students collected materials from outside to make designs on their paper. We covered the paper with a clear sheet of plastic and secured it with rocks to keep everything in place, then set in direct sun for about 4 hours. When we removed the objects from the paper, their designs appeared bright and bold while the rest of the paper had lightened.

Even now, my kiddos are still pointing out signs and billboards and playground equipment that has been bleached out by the sun.

Make a Wind Vane

After the kids got into the habit of tracking weather conditions and rainfall, we crafted a wind vane to begin measuring wind direction. We created ours using a styrofoam cup attached to a paper plate, with a pencil through the middle to attach the “arrow.”

Observe Weather Fronts

Some of our group was a little young to fully understand weather fronts, but this experiment using hot and cold water to demonstrate how heat rises brought the idea down to earth. We brought water nearly to a boil and added red food coloring to represent the hot air, then we used iced water with blue food coloring to represent the cold. When we poured both into a container of lukewarm water, we were able to see the hot water slide over the cold water before the two eventually mixed. I definitely recommend having a phone set up to take a slow-mo video of this one, because it happens fast!

Fog in a Jar

This was such a simple experiment for creating fog for the kids to observe! Bring water nearly to a boil, then fill a glass jar or bottle about ⅔ full. Let it sit for a minute to heat the glass, then pour about half out. Meanwhile, fill a plastic bag with ice. When the ice is placed on top of the bottle or jar, fog begins to form inside.

Cloud Viewer

There were many different printable cloud viewers available online, but I wanted to combine a cloud viewer with the cotton-ball cloud craft I remember doing as a kid. I planned on printing these on blue cardstock, but since I didn’t have any on hand, we printed them on regular blue paper and glued them onto a piece of cardboard. We guided the kids through using cotton balls to made small models of the three main types of clouds before taking our viewers outside to use.