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.

Weather videos from Youtube great for learning Water Cycle. 
Water Cycle Youtube with some fun singing.

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.

Weather and Clouds

We are done with our weather unit. We first learned about cloud types and made a flap book. The 4 types of clouds we learned about were; Nimbus (storm clouds), Cumulus (white puffy clouds), stratus (blanket of fog) and cirrus (thin wispy horse tail clouds).

We wrote facts underneath each type of cloud picture. Then we added the cotton balls.

We did cotton balls and white yarn strips (cirrus)  for the types of clouds. Scholastic News is a great resource for teaching clouds. 

 We made light blue ones and had drawn lines under each flap to write a few facts about each type of cloud. 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.

Picture I use for teaching clouds. I also use the Scholastic News website. 

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. 

This was a leftover one I had from last year. This year’s class did a lot more writing. We used rulewrs to write  some light lines so the facts would be neatly written. 

Here is the mini flap book we made on light blue construction paper. We used cotton balls for the clouds and used grey and blue chalk to make them look like Nimbus (stormy) clouds. For the cirrus clouds we used pieces of white yarn. For the foggy stratus clouds we cut a square of cotton
Then we wrote a definition of each type of cloud. We looked at internet pictures of the types of clouds and read 2 literature books, and a Weekly Reader.
aThe Cloud Book By dePaola, Tomie (Google Affiliate Ad)
Cloudette By Lichtenheld, Tom (Google Affiliate Ad)

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

I have about a dozen books on weather. This is just a sampling. I’m always on the lookout for Scholastic books and Amazon used books on the topics I teach in Science. Most of my legislative money goes for books. 

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.
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.

This was a 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. I also have  about 2 dozen types of instruments and some drums and xylophones so we never lose interest in singing to science texts. 


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;

 We read lots of books on the results of Wicked Weather. And the Hurricane Sandy came right along when we were discussing weather damage.

Tornado Tube Classroom Kit
Tornado Tubes are a fun way to show the motion of  hurricanes and tornadoes.
Tornado Tube
You can get this little connector for as little as $3.00 to make your own classroom tornado tubes.

   
 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 had the kids put together a page of  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 warm. 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!

Thermometers and Temperature.

We start our lesson on temperature by making a thermometer. A link for a simple thermometer is HERE found at Havefunteaching.com. I make one so kids can color a red strip and tape it together so it is long. Then we cut “slits” in the top and bottom of it and our red strip becomes the rising and falling temperature in our thermometer. 

On the thermometer there is Hot, Warm, Cool, and Cold.  The kids can easily learn what degrees are “hot” degrees, and which ones are cool and cold. We practice moving our “red strip” up and down as we say, “now it’s HOT! So what’s the temperature today? Now it’s cold, what’s the temperature today?”
Then I show the kids pictures of bathing suits, coats and gloves, tank tops and shorts and sweatshirts and ask what weather and degrees they would wear each piece of clothing in? They have to flash me one of 4 words with degrees shown below on our papers. They color and cut them out and wave them to me as I show the sweatshirts and tank tops.

weather temps and thermometer….

That’s always a fun activity and it helps the kids memorize the different temperatures a bit better.  I teach them what we would do and wear in 1) 90 degree HOT weather, and 2) 70 degree WARM weather, 3) 50 degree COOL weather and 4)  30 degree COLD weather.

hats and raincoats…what kind of weather?

                                  Wacky Weather POETRY WRITING:
I’ve used the book title “Oh Say Can You Say…What’s the Weather Like Today?” as a beginning line for rhyming poems. Kids brainstorm the words that will rhyme with today. (play, May, ray, clay, they, pray, tray, way, say, day, they etc). Then they write funny rhymes.  It is wacky but fun.

This year we did Weather Words by Gail Gibbons and we made “rain” poems using our 5 senses.  When it rains I see, When it rains I hear, When it rains I smell, touch, taste etc. We brainstorm lists under the words hear, see, smell, touch, etc. Then the kids write a sloppy copy. I walk around and edit for spelling. Then they rewrote them on cute stationery with rain clouds above. Pics are below….

Here’s a finished thermometer

 They turned out very pretty. Then we did a water cycle wheel and we talked about all the vocabulary like accumulation, precipitation, and evaporation. Our rain poems go right along with the water cycle!  We are just about done with weather! Woo Hoo!

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5 Senses Poetry



Rain Poems…..

Water Cycle Music  (tune: “It’s Raining, it’s pouring)      
It’s raining, it’s pouring,
The oceans are storing
Water from the falling rain
While thunderclouds are roaring.
The rain now is stopping,
The rain’s no longer dropping.
Sun comes out and soaks up water
Like a mop that’s mopping.
The water’s still there now,
But hidden in the air now.
In the clouds it makes a home
Until there’s rain to share now.
It’s raining, it’s pouring…
Meish Goldish

Here are the Water Cycle Wheels we made….super great for a visual understanding…

It’s always fun in my class to sing to percussion instruments. I’ve got drums, wood blocks, tambourines, shakers, boomwhackers, xylophones and sticks. So when it’s time to do a rap or sing, we do percussion too.

POETRY: Weather is Hot, Weather is Cold  RAP!                                                                           ,
Weather is hot,   (snap your fingers as your recite it together)
Weather is cold,
Weather is changing
As the weeks unfold.
Skies are cloudy,
Skies are fair,
Skies are changing
In the air.
It is raining,
It is snowing,
It is windy
With breezes blowing.
Days are foggy,
Days are clear,
Weather is changing
Throughout the year!
by:  Meish Goldish

Well that’s the end of our weather unit for this year. I only wish the actual weather was better by now! It snowed again!