
Hands-on learning is awesome for those that get bored easily. The “what if” and “I wonder” questions get answered naturally as one works through the activity. Hands-on activities can reinforce a subject or a lesson you already plan to teach or serve as fun, “teachable moments.” As the month of May has arrived, the study of weather becomes very appropriate and interesting.
While you and your children are doing these activities, remember to, in the spirit of real science, ask your children to journal their experiences. Keeping a science journal encourages children to record and reflect on inquiry-based observations, activities, investigations, and experiments. Journals are also an excellent way for children to communicate their understanding of activities and concepts.
There are so many excellent ideas for how to study weather hands-on. Rather than give you one or two written out ideas, I have given you the links to several good projects on other sites where you will find even more. Hopefully, these ideas will help you and your children’s interest in weather science explode:
- Make a weather vane to show wind direction
- Make an anemometer to measure wind speed.
- Create a thunderstorm in your home!
- Make rain in a jar
- Make a rain gauge to measure rainfall
- Create a rainbow
- Create some tiny lightning to see how lightning is formed
- Create a tornado in a soda bottle
- Watch a cloud form in a bottle
- Make a thermometer of your own
Have fun and make memories.