4 Easy Weather Science Lessons & Activities for Types of WEather in 1st Grade
After 3 days out for S*N*O*W last week, we are finally back in a normal routine. Today is Wednesday and it’s the first time in about a month that I’ve worked 3 days in a row… now that’s just crazy!
We’re diving into our first grade weather unit this week. Here are a few of the weather science lessons and types of weather activities we’ve been up to in first grade!
Types of Weather Research
First, we read this book on weather. This comes from a Scholastic set of weather books that are fantastic readers for first graders. They’re perfect non-fiction books. They are easy enough for first graders to understand, but beefy enough to teach good information. I love these weather books so much that I have a set for our animal classification unit too! They have lots of simple non-fiction features too, like bold print, table of contents, glossary, captions, and labels.
As we read our weather book, we charted weather words on our “cheery” weather words chart…hey! I had to think of some way to bring a little warmth and sunshine into our lives. Mother Nature certainly wasn’t doing her part last week!
Earth’s Cycles Anchor Chart
We also started another one of my favorite weather anchor charts on Earth’s natural cycles. We will continue to add to this weather anchor chart throughout our weather science lessons and unit.
I absolutely love doing this chart because it lends itself to such great conversations like: what cycles are, the difference between cycles and linear events (weather types versus water cycle), natural cycles versus unnatural cycles (like recycling)… The kids love “discovering” cycles during our unit as I strategically lead them on their own. 🙂 The following may or may not have been heard in my classroom in during these weather science lessons in past years:
“Our schedule is the same as it was yesterday!”
“So, it was December and the end of the year before we left for break and now we’ve started ALL OVER again in January. Hmmm.”
“You mean after 12:00 it’s 1:00 AGAIN??’
Yep, guilty. It’s just so much more meaningful when the kids “figure it out” on their own! Also, they love getting their name on each of our cycle papers when we add them so they can claim their discovery.
Types of Weather Carousel Activity
This week we did a carousel activity where students rotated in groups around our room to write about what they already know about types of weather. We will go over each of the weather charts as we talk about them whole group so we can find misconceptions and new learning. They had 1 minute at each station to write what they knew about the following types of weather: sunny, snowy, icy, cloudy, partly cloudy, sunny, windy, and stormy.
While I’ve used the carousel strategy for several years, this particular group was 100% lovin’ this types of weather activity! I’m going to be finding more ways to use this carousel activity in our classroom because they were hooked from start to finish! Because I’m a color-coding *freak* I gave each group a different color pen.
Have you ever noticed that writing in pen is super awesome? Because it is. To six year olds anyways. Everything is better in pen. But, the “real” reason for colorful pens was so I could see that each group was adding to the poster. It makes it easy to see which groups are contributing and which are not…
Of course all of these weather science lessons and tons more types of weather activities are in my first grade weather unit!
Sending warm thoughts your way…