Explore how air surrounds us and is felt as wind; explore changes in…

Weather Watchers: What Will the Sky Do Today? Grades K–2

Is it sunny, windy or wet today, and how can we tell? Young scientists keep a class weather chart for two weeks, build wind socks to catch the wind and make a rain gauge from a bottle to measure the rain.

• What's the weather like today? 30 min to start, 5 min a day for two weeks, 30 min to graph

  Children look at the sky at the same time every school day for two weeks and add a weather picture to a big class chart. Then they count the sunny, cloudy, rainy and snowy days, build a bar graph together and use it to say what kind of weather their two weeks had.

• Which way is the wind blowing? 40–45 min, plus 5 min on two or three other days

  Children make a paper-plate wind sock with crepe-paper streamers and take it into the schoolyard to see which way the wind blows and how strong it is. They find out that we can't see wind, but we can see what it does, and they sort days into calm, breezy and windy.

• How much rain fell? 40 min, plus 5 min a day for a week

  Teams build a rain gauge from a clear, straight-sided bottle with a ruler taped on, set it outside and measure the rain each day for a week. On a dry week they make a watering-can 'storm' instead, and test what happens when rain lands on grass, soil and pavement.