Weather Inspiration

We just wrapped up our big weather unit, and I wanted to share a few of my favorite activities/projects with you!  I tried to pick easy to implement crafts and experiments, because it has been so crazy busy trying to balance learning fun with my seemingly endless amounts of end of the nine weeks assessments!  

Art project idea:  Torn Paper Tornadoes

Using old magazines, I had my kids find pages with dark colors, but with different images/textures.  They had a blast tearing the magazines up and gluing them into a tornado shape.  They also picked out some funky beads to glue to their tornadoes--to represent the debris.  They all turned out so unique.  I think tear paper art might just be my new fave!

Science Observation Station:  Tornadoes in a Bottle

I bought a set of tornado tubes from Steve Spangler Science for super cheap, and made 5 or 6 tornado tubes for our science station.  I added tornado books and tornado photos too.  Each bottle had different "debris"--the one below had styrofoam beads.  This was a hit!  They were sad when I started to pack the bottles away at the end of our unit.

Tornado Reading & Research:  Twister Facts!

My students were really into talking about tornadoes, so I created a giant twister anchor chart using paint and silver glitter.  After reading and finding out cool tornado facts, they jotted down their new learning on sticky notes and added it to our twister!

EASY Science Experiment:  Air Bags

You can't learn about weather without learning more about air!  We talked about how air is all around us, but we can't see it--and that air does have weight.  To demonstrate, everyone was given a ziplock baggie and a straw.  The students filled up the bags with air, and could *see* that air was inside.  

Anchor Chart:  Hurricanes

We read The Magic School Bus Goes Inside a Hurricane, and jotted down all kinds of cool facts.  I compiled all the information we learned from the book into an anchor chart for display throughout our unit!

Hope you can use one of these ideas for your study of weather!