Teacher Recommended Resources - Weather

These extensions are brought to you by other teachers who have used this unit. They have not been evaluated by The Einstein Project. REV. 4/28/08

Reading Rainbow “Weather” program

Use the weather map from the newspaper

Describe wind chill using a chart

Study the fabric content of clothes we wear

Study the temperature difference between under the snow and on top of the snow. Predict which will be higher or warmer.

Speaker: meteorologist, National Weather Bureau

Books:

• Ice and Snow
• I Like the Rain
• Fell the Wind
• Round & Round the Seasons Go
• It Looked Like Spilt Milk
• Mr. Bear’s Bow Ties
• Thunder Cake
• We Play on a Rainy Day
• It’s Raining, It’s Pouring
• The Cloud Book - dePaola
• A Cloudy Day
• The Wind Blew
• A Sunny Day
• A Snowy Day
• A Windy Day
• A Stormy Day
• Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain
   

Big book made by students illustrating their favorite kind of weather

Class book about favorite things to do in winter

Instead of the cotton balls for clouds, we do an inkblot, then write a sentence patterned after the book It Looked Like Spilt Milk.

Melt a snowman

Make a:  water cycle
- weather mobile - used hangers and made large rainbows to cover the hanger. Then they strung smaller weather symbols [i.e. clouds, raindrops, suns, tornadoes, etc.] off the ends  
-  weather quilt    -  cloud mobile
 -  cloud pop-up book  - frost with salt & ice
 -  pinwheels

Huff & Puff

Did “City Storm”

Videos:  “Rain” & “Clouds” by Greatest Tales, Inc.
- “Clouds” & “Weather” by Troll
- Magic School Bus – “Kicks Up a Storm”
- “Weather” – Eyewitness
- “Snowy Day and Other Poems” – Reading Rainbow
- “Comes a Tide” - Reading Rainbow

Made forecast pictures with lesson 13, after reading Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Students made a city with black paper and glued it on blue paper along with food items from home [cut from magazines]. The students then wrote a whacky forecast to go along with their picture.

Created our own indoor rainstorm the day we made the rain gauges. Played a CD of a storm and we rubbed our hands, snapped fingers, clapped hands, hit our legs, and finally stomped our feet to create our own storm. Sprayed the students with a plant mister so they could pretend they’d been rained on.

Put a thermometer outside of school for daily readings

Video taped weather segments – watched & discussed

Made charts and laminated them to use next year

Get a free newsletter and used a song tape from – “The Weather Dude” [Nick Walker] PO Box 9535 Seattle, WA  98290-0535  http://www.wxdude.com

Weather Songs: http://www.wxdude.com/guide.html

PBS show called “Backyard Safari” has an episode on “Clouds” – excellent

Brought in a “Thunder Tube” – simulates thunder sound – inexpensive from “On the Wall Productions”