Categories Literacy, S.T.E.A.M., Science

Weather Lesson Plans: Weather Research Project

Springtime means changing weather which means it’s the perfect time for our Weather Research Project which is packed with weather lesson plans, activities and centers!

For our weather unit, we use our Weather Research Project!

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

We kick off our weather unit with my favorite book, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs! It’s the perfect book to get kids curious about weather and have some discussions about weather.

To set the stage, we use pool floats!

cloudy with a chance of meatballs lesson plans

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.

weather lesson plans and writing activities

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!

All of our research projects begin with a schema map! As we journey through our research project, we add new learning to our schema map and address any misconceptions we have.

Weather Lesson Plans: Weather Observation Journal

As part of our weather unit, we do daily weather observations. Each day, we observe the weather conditions, record our observations, and write about what we see. To get the temperature, we use weather.com!

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 the weather! The students then add words to their journals!

Weather Lesson Plans: Types Of Weather

We start off with the wind. We learned about the wind and wrote 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 do a torn paper sun!

We do this fun rain art project. The kids use their fingers to make clouds out of cotton balls and fingerprint raindrops!

Then we make these tornado pictures. The clouds and tornadoes are made from newspaper, and then the kids make trees, cars, and other stuff to go in the tornado!

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, we learn about meteorologists. The students had to use their daily observation journals and create their forecasts. The forecast had to make sense and be realistic.