Exploring the Weather (Wind)

I took the kids outside with our science notebooks to observe the weather on this nice spring day to see if they would be interested in exploring it further. We sat in a group and discussed what they noticed. They noticed the new flowers, and the wind. They were fascinated by how the wind was moving the clouds and making the flowers bend. I asked if they wanted to explore the wind further and of course they did! They started out by documenting what they noticed as we were sitting outside.

We read some books about the wind, watched a great video of a giant kite festival in Guatemala, and used the promethium board to explore tools that measure the wind. They were very excited to make some tools of their own! We made wind socks and took them outside to find out what they told us. They realized wind socks could tell them if the wind was blowing hard or soft, and what direction the wind blew.

We also made wind vanes and took them outside to see what they told us. I think the documentation done by the kids says it all!

The wind was blowing so hard, it bent most of our wind vanes! The kids were using tier III vocabulary words when describing it outside, calling it a gale and saying they wished it was just a breeze!

Next we will need to organize our data to show what we now know about the wind after our explorations and investigations.