Springtime Poetry and Kite art and Weather Activities.

 Well, Springtime in my classroom means we do some weather activities.

We write about things that happen in the spring including flowers, sports, bugs, baby animals, and all kinds of weather!

We sing the song below about Clouds to the tune of “Itsy Bitsy Spider”. 

We will be starting our weather unit when we go back on track. Spring is the perfect time to start since we get all types of crazy weather in springtime.

Weather activities are really interesting and fun to kids of all ages.

We will make some Cloud Flip Books and write facts underneath each type of cloud picture. Then we’ll add the cotton balls to depict each type of cloud.  Here are the cotton ball clouds and the name of each type of cloud.  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. It is so good for kids to practice those sight words while singing.  We will sing them to a familiar tune like ABC song, Jimmy Crack Corn, or Row Row Row your 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.

For more Weather Activities we read this Cloud Choral Reading and these 2 books on Clouds and the Cloud Poem too!

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. The two above are my favorites.

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

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.

Another thing I usually do is have the kids make a wind pinwheel  for an ART ACTIVITY 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 new pencil eraser with a straight pin. Get a mom helper to go around and help with this for young kids . Then we go outside on a windy day and watch our creations twirl. This one had some cute stars and swirls kids colored on it. Print up your pinwheel on regular colors of paper (not cardstock, too heavy to twirl) and let them decorate them.

I got this from another teacher, but I’ve done them just with a square too. You do the cutting before passing them out.

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.

I’ll also begin talking about taking care of our world and being a part of Earth Day which is coming up in a month. That will be our next unit.

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 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!

I have lots of books on the results of Wicked Weather. And Tornados and Typhoons come along right when we are 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.

If we have time a fun weather puzzle with the 3 types of violent weather types (lightening, tornadoes and hurricanes) is lots of fun. We glue 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 do is make a thermometer with paper. Check it out HERE. We talk about hot and cold, cool and freezing weather and what temperature each type of weather would be. (Hot 80 to 100, Cool 50 to 60, Warm 70 to 80ish,  Freezing 30 and below. Then I showed them lots of coats, sweaters, bathing suits etc. and asked what temperature each would be. They hold up the little pictures with the words hot, warm, cold etc.

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 crosswordHERE at teach-nology.com. Another one is HERE at Homeschooling.com.  Some years I have them  write a story after reading Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

Above is a fun WATER CYCLE SONG. 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 are lots of bad weather days, where food rains all over the city. It is fun to write funny stories about our favorite foods raining on our city in  Utah.

Some Weekly Readers and Language Arts writing we d0…. Some years I’ve done the I Can poem above.

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.  

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.