Weather Unit

At our school, we are blessed to be able to come up with our own scope and sequence for the year. My team really tries to integrate our social studies and science units throughout all subjects. Our first science unit this year was weather. We touch on weather everyday in math during calendar time. We talk about what the weather is that day and the kids record the weather in their monthly weather graph. At the end of the month we will tally up the totals and find out which has the most, least and which ones are equal. I have a FEELING that sunny/hot will be the most in August, but I'm just guessing. ;-)

The main part of our unit took place during our science time. We started out reviewing the four seasons and talking about what the weather is like in each season. In their science journals, the kids drew the weather and wrote weather words that went with each season.

We also talked about the water cycle and how water turns to water vapor, clouds form and then rain falls back to the earth. I even introduced the words condensation, evaporation and precipitation. Big words for 6 year olds. :) The kids recorded the cycle in their science journal and a few even wrote the big words down!

During shared reading, we read a poem called Who Has See the Wind? We read the poem together and talked about how we know the wind is there. The kids then got to decorate their poem and circle the sight words they knew.

We decided that we can't see the wind, but we know it's there because we see what it does. On the back of the poem, they wrote about what effects the wind has on different objects.

The wind blows the trees and the leaves away

The wind is really fast. I don't like it.

During a read-aloud I read Eric Carle's The Tiny Seed and had the kids make a graphic organizer showing what the seed was doing during each season. Our next unit was on plants, so this was a great segue into the parts of the plants and what a plant needs. This book goes through the seasons so we talked about the different kinds of weather in each season.

During writing, the kids worked on a weather book all week. They wrote and drew pictures about activities they would do in different kinds of weather (sunny, windy, rainy, snowy, etc.) I forgot to take pictures of these, but believe me, they were adorable. :)

Our big end of unit project was a Season brochure. The kids got to choose their favorite season and write all about it.

In the brochure they wrote about activities they do in that season, what they would wear and special holidays. They also wrote down the months that occur in that season.

Up Next....Plants Unit!! :)