Weather Activities in Primary School

Weather provides opportunites for students to engage in science by observing the world outside classroom windows.

Weather is, literally, all around us, so we have ongoing opportunities to make it a part of elementary school study. Whether they use the Internet or the school playground, children can observe and experiment with weather science, formally known as meteorology. Studying weather offers lots of opportunities to practice scientific observation, to do hands-on activities, and to apply what they learn.

Clouds

Students can put their study of different cloud types to work for professional scientists with NASA's S'COOL program, in which children's ground observations become part of a weather-satellite database. Students can also turn outdoor observations into a cloud-type scavenger hunt or bingo game, marking off the types they see in the course of a week. They can even study clouds without leaving the classroom, by making their own cloud in a jar.

Precipitation

Students can set up a rain gauge on school grounds and check it every day, logging the results. Compare these totals to the reported rainfall in your area, and use this study to launch a discussion of the water cycle. Students can also learn which atmospheric conditions create which types of precipitation; have them play a memory-matching game, connecting the causes with their effects.

Storms

This most dramatic form of weather grabs the headlines, so students can study those headlines in a review of our nation's -- or your area's -- most powerful storms. You can safely study some storm effects in the classroom, by recreating "lightning" with static electricity or tornadoes simulated with water. Real-world storm chasing is more dangerous, but you can study those researchers from a safe distance, such as with NOAA's Vortex program.

Connections

Take your study of weather across the curriculum by connecting this earth science with other subjects. Incorporate mathematics by graphing the types of clouds your students list over a given time period, or by averaging rainfall and daily temperatures each week. Have students keep a weather journal, and encourage them to use concrete, expressive adjectives to write a paragraph each day describing their observations. You can even connect your weather study to social studies by taking a page from The Weather Channel's successful series looking at how weather conditions affected important historical events, such as the snowy winter at Valley Forge.

References

• WGN Chicago Weather Center: Definition of Meteorological
• NASA: S'COOL Project: Students' Cloud Observations Online
• National Center for Atmospheric Research: Educator's Bridge: Atmospheric Explorers: Storms
• University of Illinois: Weather World 2010 Online Meteorology Guide: Precipitation
• NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory: Vortex: Unraveling the Secrets

Resources

• American Meteorological Society Glossary of Meteorology
• NOAA Central Library: U.S. Daily Weather Maps Project (1871-2002)
• U.S. Department of Commerce: NOAA Daily Weather Maps (2003-present)