Weather Forecasting Unit Study

We actually started this one before the one about bees.  And finished it later.  Travis wanted to know how to predict the weather, so….

BOOKS

I love being able to go online to our county library website, search their catalog, reserve books, and request them to be put on hold for me.  Saves me a lot of time searching the shelves – especially with 5 helpers in tow…

As usual, the Gail Gibbons books are great..

A basic one about what meteorologists do..

 

Meteorologists (Community Helper Series)

by Sandra J. Christan

 

 

 

 

A more advanced one …. we didn’t quite get through all of this one.

 

 

Doppler Radar, Satellites, and Computer Models

by Paul Fleisher

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just for fun, because my kids like to tell me jokes…

 

Wacky Weather and Silly Season Jokes

by Melissa Stewart

 

 

 

 

 

 

A good book with simple, basic experiments.  We did several of them (see below) before running out of attention span.

 

Weather with step-by-step projects for the young scientist

by Sally Hewitt

 

 

 

 

A really good book (good enough to order our own copy, though it was hard to find).  A bit advanced for my age group, but it did have some good experiments and I think it will be even more useful in few more years.

 

 

The Kids’ Book of Weather Forecasting

by Mark Breen

 

 

 

And a good website that Travis explored for a while …

www.weather.gov

EXPERIMENTS

One experiment in the Sally Hewitt book was to make a wind detector by tying pieces of paper of different weights to a stick.  A light breeze will only blow the lightest paper (tissue paper) and a stronger breeze will blow the cardboard.

It was really windy the day we tried it out, so we decided it would be a good time to have another go at…

…flying kites… about two and a half of them worked this time…

 

Another experiment was a barometer.  I didn’t really expect this to work, but it did!!  As the air pressure goes up, it pushes down on the balloon stretched over the can, which makes the toothpick pointer go up.  And vice versa.   These pictures were taken on three consecutive days.  If you look closely, you can see that we had to draw an extra higher line.  The next couple of days after this, it dropped dramatically – and, sure enough, we had clouds and rain!

  

 

This was actually the first experiment that we did back in January. I learned a new word with this one: anemometer.  It measures wind speed.  Travis build this one.

 

Just before we had the rain, I bought a rain gauge and set it up in our back yard…we got 4/10 of an inch.

We did the “cloud in a bottle” experiment: put hot water in a jar for a few seconds, pour out half, and put an ice cube or ice pack over the top.  Water vapor condenses and makes it look a little bit cloudy in the jar.

We also measured the temperature in the shade and in the sun several days to see the difference.

 

SUMMARIZING WHAT WE LEARNED

We put together this display board to summarize what we’ve learned about weather…

 

I made the outline for the title and Jeffrey and Brian filled it in.  They both did a great job tracing inside the lines, for their ages and abilities.

 

We listed the 5 “ingredients” for weather and the tools used to measure them. I am proud of  Travis and Heather for doing all the drawings on their own!

  

We kept a weather log and observed some weather “rules”:

• A rising barometer means good weather.
• A falling barometer means bad weather.
• High humidity makes you feel hotter.  This is called heat index.
• Wind makes you feel colder.  This is called wind chill.

 

We looked briefly at how to read a weather map…

 

  

 

And copied some verses from the Bible about rain.

Proverbs 17:15 A constant dripping on a day of steady rain and a contentious woman are alike.

 

  Job 28:25-27

²⁵ “When He [God] imparted weight to the wind
And meted out the waters by measure,
²⁶ When He set a limit for the rain
And a course for the thunderbolt,
²⁷ Then He saw it and declared it;
He established it and also searched it out.

 

A major accomplishment : Jeffrey drew a picture on his own, cheerfully!  There are two orange dinosaurs flying kites in a rain storm.  The wind is so strong that the one on the left is getting lifted into the air.

 

Mommy drew this one at Brian’s dictation…