Weather: Level K
Learning Center:
Provide the children with samples of fabrics and other materials that are used to make clothing. Include swatches of linen, cotton, wool, fur, and vinyl or other weatherproof material. Provide photographs or draw separate pictures to illustrate hot, sunny weather; rainy weather; and cold, snowy weather. cut out a paper doll figure from a piece of oak tag or cardboard. Instruct the children to place the doll on one of the weather scenes. Tell them to look at and feel each piece of material. Explain that they must decide which materials should be used to make clothing for the doll to wear in that weather scene. You may wish to have the children explain their choices to the class.
Books:
Branley, Franklin.
Flash, Crash, Rumble and Roll
. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co.
Eta, Marie Hall.
Gilberto and the Wind
. New York: The Viking Press.
Keats, Ezra Jack.
A Letter to Amy
. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.
Shaw, Charles.
It Looked like Spilt Milk
. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.
Filmstrip:
The Weather
. Morristown, NJ: Silver Burdett Co., l987. Color; Cassette.
Objectives:
To identify a variety of weather conditions. To record daily weather conditions on a weather chart.
Concepts:
*Weather conditions may vary from day to day.
*Existing weather conditions affect the way people dress.
Vocabulary:
weather/ windy/ cloudy/ sunny/ rainy snowy/ hot/ cold/ warm/ cool
Materials: large pieces of oak tag magazines scissors/ paste/glue/ poster board/ 1” squares(several each of yellow, gray, blue, and white)
Motivation:
Have each child find and cut out a picture showing an outdoor scene. Have each child describe his/her picture and tell what kind of weather is depicted. Tell the children that they will be studying the weather and will used the cut outs for a weather montage. Use the oak tag to label the major types of weather shown and categorize the picture cut outs for mounting. Introduce the five weather types listed in the vocabulary section of this lesson.
Lesson:
Take the children outdoors or allow them to look outside through a large window. Ask: What kind of weather are we having today? To stimulate further discussion ask: Is it hot or cold? Is it warm or cool? Is it sunny? What does the wind sound like? ETC .
Take the children back to the classroom. Use poster board to prepare a weather chart in the form of a bar graph, as shown below. Choose one child to act as a “weather reporter”. Have that child mount a colored square on the chart next to the weather symbol that best describes the day’s weather. If it is a windy day, note it by writing a W on the square for that day.
Continue the graphing activity each day for several weeks. When the weather chart is complete, help the children add up the number of days on which each type of weather occurred. Ask: What type of weather occurred most often? What type of weather occurred least often?
Subject integration:
Mathematics: classification greatest/least