Meteorologists R Us

We've started off the year with a month-long weather unit and we're just about ready to take over the Weather Channel. I'm sure it will be a hostile takeover because, well, I have boys.

We're using a book from the "And God Created Science" series called "Exploring Weather: 30 Amazing projects that explore the wonders of God's Creation." Each lesson is 2-3 pages and there are cool experiments like crushing soda bottles with air pressure. Also really easy instructions for a rain gauge, wind vane, anemometer, barometer - you can make your own little weather station!

Showing that hot air expands and cold air compresses.

Z-Man writes out his hypothesis, our procedure and the results to keep in his notebook.

We used the book, "How Artists See the Weather" and the Beaufort wind scale to determine the intensity of the wind in some of the paintings. Z-Man enjoyed that. We found one artist, J.M.W. Turner, who actually "tied himself to a ship's mast in order to experience the fury and motion of a snowstorm at sea."

We're keeping all our weather info - wind direction, speed, precipitation, clouds, temp, etc. on the calendar so we can do a lot of graphs with it later. Oooooh, love that sneaky math.

For cursive practice, DS is doing old fashioned weather sayings, like "Rain by seven, clear by eleven." I use this cursive worksheet generator.

We've also been reading weather-related poems by Christina Rossetti, our poet of the semester. That link will send you to a long list of her poems from Ambleside Online.

And, of course, we're reading all the FIAR books that have weather in them! Henry the Castaway, Madeline, Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car, etc. Z-Man has been happy for the chance to row these wonderful favorites again.