Weather, Clouds and Water Cycle Activities for Kids

We are about done with our Weather Unit this week. Here are some of our fun activities we did….

A song we sang about Clouds to the tune of “Itsy Bitsy Spider”.

We made Cloud Flip Books. We wrote facts underneath each type of cloud picture. Then we added the cotton balls underneath the flaps and then wrote about each cloud type.  Here are the cotton ball clouds and the definitions of each type.  Cloud flip books…they turn out really neat. CLOUD TYPES FLIP BOOKS AND CLOUD ACTIVITIES…. This poem I typed up and we put one on the back of our Cloud Flap Books. I always do poems on the back of art for shared reading and we try to sing them to a familiar tune like ABC song, Jimmy Crack Corn or Row Row Row you Boat.

. Check out the Scholastic News website for great info and pictures on Clouds. I order the Scholastic News every year. A lot of times I save the science ones to use with my units.

Poster I leave up on the board during our Cloud activities.

We read this Cloud Choral Reading and these 2 books on Clouds and the Cloud Poem too!

The Weekly Reader/Scholastic News have a product called Science Spin. I order that every year for an extra dollar or so  per student. I use them because I have no science textbooks. I also order a lot of science reading literature and always keep it at the SCIENCE CENTER. It is the most populated center every day.

The Cloud Book By dePaola, Tomie

Cloudette By Lichtenheld, Tom 

I’ve accumulated quite an array of weather books over my 20  years of teaching. Here are a few.

Some of the Weather Books and Scholatic News on weather we read this week…..

Another thing I usually do is have the kids make a wind pinwheel as part of learning about tornadoes and hurricanes. It is just made with a square, and we curl up each triangle and pin it to the top of a pencil eraser. Then we go outside on a windy day and watch our creations twirl. This one had some cute stars and swirls on it.

The next day we did some Water Cycle Activities. We Read a Weekly Reader on the Water Cycle that had a cool diagram.

We made these Water Cycle Wheels too…I like the vocabulary listed …we test on two of these words; evaporation and precipitation on our weekly vocab quiz. A Cloud and Weather Vocabulary word sort can be found HERE  free at TPT. I loved this water cycle activity pack that I found FREE from TPT. Check it out HERE. It was easy for my kiddos. The water cycle wheel I got from another teacher I believe she got it from a book.

Pinwheels are a fun way to start the day learning about wind and all the types of windy weather and the damage it can do.

Some free weather stationery is HERE. And HERE is a printable of all types of weather in a cute blackline from Scholastic that you could use to make your own magnet matching game like mine below. You do have to subscribe to Scholastic and pay a small fee to get these though. I bought my game below from a teacher supply store.

This was a  WEATHER center game. I had added velcro to the back and they used the carpeted wall to match the word to the weather picture. I left all the weather books at the Science Center along with this game.

I have an auto harp I play and the kids love singing songs to the music. HERE was a water cycle song we sang to the tune of “IT’S RAINING IT’S POURING”.  I also have  about 2 dozen types of instruments and some drums and xylophones so we never lose interest in singing to science texts. Check out my store above to see some great deals on musical instruments. I especially love the blue boxed xylophone. It was only $20.00 and I bought 3 for my classroom. The kids love to get them out when we sing and 2 kids will pay them to keep the rhythm with bells. Here is a pack of freebies from TPT Check it out!

The Water Cycle poster I keep up while we are doing our water cycle wheels and singing our songs.

Here is another Water Cycle Song:
Tune: Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush
Here we go round the water cycle, water cycle, water cycle.
Here we go round the water cycle, each and every day.
The ocean water evaporates, evaporates, evaporates,
The ocean water evaporates and makes tiny drops.
The clouds condense to make a raincloud, make a raincloud, make a raincloud,
The clouds condense to make a raincloud, and some feel really heavy!
The heavy drops precipitate, precipitate, precipitate,
The heavy drops precipitate, to make water accumulate. (puddles, lakes, rivers, and underground wells)
Then it’s time to start again, start again, start again,
Then it’s time to start again, the never ending Water Cycle!

We make a rotating water cycle wheel on a brad, coloring it and cutting it out. On the back we have a Water cycle poem or one of these songs I’ve typed up.

We read lots of books on the results of Wicked Weather. And the Phillipines Typhoon came right along when we were discussing weather damage. SCIENCE EXPERIMENT: TORNADO TUBE

   
 This is a Tornado Tube. I put 2 empty 2 liter bottles together with one of them filled with water. The kids loved coming up and twirling it around till it made a tornado. You can get the Tornado Tube from Steve Spangler Science. I think it is about $3.00 plus shipping.

 We made a puzzle with the 3 types of violent weather types (lightening, tornadoes and hurricanes) and glued them down after discussing safety during each one.

I had the kids put together a page of  3 cool puzzles; tornadoes, hurricanes and lightening. This is what it looks like before .

The last thing we did was making a thermometer with paper.Check it out HERE. We talked about hot and cold, cool and freezing weather and what temperature each would be. Then I showed them lots of coats, sweaters, bathing suits etc. and asked what temperature each would be.

We made thermometers and learned what temperature spring, summer, winter and fall weather would be….

A few more worksheets are at Superteacher Worksheets.. Then we did some temperature worksheets like these Here at www.education.com. We had a great time learning about WEATHER!

A weather crossword I use in my weather unit is HERE at teach-nology.com. Some years I have them also do a WEATHER ACROSTIC POEM or we write a story after reading Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

A cool reader’s theater script I found on the story of the water cycle can be printed free HERE at Grandview Library. It is from Enchanted Learning. It’s cute and would make the kids use their imagination. These are some cool Youtubes I found that the kids like. I have a hard time choosing between them but I usually show one or two during the 2 week unit.

Another cute song….on CLOUDS! In the book CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS there were lots of bad weather where food rained all over the city. If we have time we will use our short week next week to write funny stories about our favorite foods raining on our city in Sandy or Draper, Utah. That will be pretty interesting to read about!

Some Weekly Readers and Language Arts writing we did….

We used THIS STORY WEB to begin with problem, solution, setting and characters. A fun website that has lots of fun online graphics and activities is at Webweather’s site.  

weather	hailstorms	hurricane	tornado
funnel	fog	cloudy	water vapor
cirrus cloud	stratus cloud	nimbus rain cloud	cumulus cloud
evaporation	precipitation	violent weather	lightening

Here were some of the WEATHER vocabulary words we studied for the week and added to our science pocket chart too. Weather is one of my favorite units to teach. The kids all love learning about it.