Weather-how fitting?

Ok it's now March. Come on Mother Nature show us some mercy here. Last week we had 40 degree weather. Saturday we had a ton of rain. Sunday we had a ton of snow. Today we have crazy winds, rain, hail, snow....basically Ms. Nature can't make up her mind. So anywho, how fitting is it that we are learning about weather in our science unit? We are all itching for spring..so badly that when we made our anchor chart, nobody even wanted to put snow or cold on the the board :(  We use a kit from our local BOCES learning center. It's nice because it comes with a bajillion ideas and pre-made plans that we can pick and choose from. We started the week building our Anchor Chart-

{there's an empty space in the corner so we can add words to it after we finish the unit}

We love Gail Gibbons, so of course we used her book to start us off. We talked about using our senses to determine the weather. We bundled up and ventured outside. In our weather booklets, we wrote down our sense observations. (I had them look at a house's chimney so they could visualize how the wind made the smoke move) 

Today we talked about thermometers. Tested the temperature in 3 different cups full of water(hot, tap, ice cold). Then we made our own thermometers.

You glue down the thermometer picture (we teach using the celsius numbers to begin with) Punch holes in the top and bottom. Have the students fold a shoelace in half and color 1 half of it red. Thread the string through to 2 holes and you've got yourself a thermometer.

Tomorrow we will learn about anemometer's and head back outside to test the wind. We'll compare the data from the anemometer to the Beaufort Scale.

Next week we'll learn all about clouds and make our own cloud shapes out of--what else--cotton balls! We'll compare daytime and nightime using our schema of the Sun and how the Earth tilts. We plan on making a season's book...students will have to draw a picture of what animals do during a certain season, what the weather is like, what types of activities they could do, or what clothing they would wear. And my favorite activity of the whole unit will be when we read Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs!!!! I planned a great SMARTBoard lesson with cloze sentences to compare the food in the book to actual weather. As the final project, we will use different weather words and pictures we find in newspapers to create a poster of our favorite season. Sorry I don't have any cute printables...we use a lot of the sheets that come with the kit. Why re-invent the wheel, right?

Tomorrow is Thursday, but it's really my kiddos Friday. No school for them Friday or Monday..staff days for me. Friday I am attending a Brian Mendler conference and Monday I'll be doing some Thoughtful Classroom things and hopefully some planning.

Can't wait to spend all next week doing fun Irish things, it's my favorite. Hope the cleaners won't mind Leprechaun footprints and a load of glitter :)