Springtime means changing weather which means it’s the perfect time for our Weather Research Project!
For our unit, we use our Weather Research Project!
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
We kick off our unit with my favorite book: Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs!
To set the stage, we use pool floats hanging from the ceiling!
And of course, I dress the part!
To enhance our comprehension skills while reading Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, we use one of our creations from our Read It Up! series. The students write about what kind of food they want to fall from the sky.
There are many more activities included in Read It Up! Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. 
To learn more about Read It Up! Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs click the picture below. (this creation is NOT included in the Weather Research Project)
As we conduct our research project students record their learning and writing in their research journals! These research journals give the students more ownership and engagement in our learning!
As with all of our research projects, we kick off with a schema map! As we journey through our research project, we add new learning to our schema map and address any misconceptions!
Weather Observation Journal
This year we focused on daily weather observations. Each day we observed the weather and recorded our observations and wrote about what we saw.
Weather Words
Our first weather activity is to think of as many weather words as we can! This gives Mr. Greg a general idea of what we know or think about weather! The students then add words to their journals!
After weather words we learn about different weather such as the sun, rain, wind, etc.
We start off with the wind. We learn about the wind and write about the wind. Then we get to become the wind! Each student uses a straw to see how far they can blow a feather! Before we blow, we estimate how far we can blow the feather! Then we record their actual distance!
We learn about the sun and fingerpaint a sun so we’re also learning about colors and mixing colors!
We do this fun rain art project. The kids use their fingers to make clouds out of cotton balls and fingerprint rain drops!
Then we make these tornado pictures. The clouds and tornado are made from newspaper and then the kids make trees, cars, and other stuff to go in the tornado! (Ya’ll, here in the south, we’re well versed in tornados!)
As part of our unit we learn about clouds and the water cycle. By the end of our unit the kids can tell you which clouds make rain and how rain happens. To illustrate this we do this science experiment with shaving cream and food coloring.
Culminating Task: Meteorologists
For our culminating task, the students had to use their daily observation journals and create their own forecast. The forecast had to make sense and be realistic.
The students then stood in front of our green screen and became a meteorologist!
Weather Snack
And of course, we have a snack! Clouds and rain with whipped cream and blueberries!
We wrapped up our unit with SNOW CONES!
We also do fun centers with rain and sun and rainbows!
Checkout the full preview of our Weather Research Project:
And of course we practice our sight words with stormy sight words!
For more weather resources, check out these creations:
For more ideas and activities, check out these posts:
The Saturday Kindergarten Post (Cloud People)
Weather Hats
No weather unit can be complete with a silly hat!! Click the picture below to get your free silly hats from Jen Hart Design.
Weather Books
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