Saturday, April 24, 2010

Cloud Study Beginning

We don't have that many weeks until our summer break and I wanted to finish up our year of earth science learning something related to weather.  I searched the NASA Educators web site and found four weather-related lesson plans for grades 5 through 8: Investigating the Climate System-Clouds, Weather, Wind, and Precipitation (you can see the links for the others from the Clouds link.)

The Clouds guide is 31 pages, though only pages 3 through 11 are student-related while the rest are for teachers.  The premise is that the students have been hired  as interns in the State Climatology Office and they need to investigate a letter written to them by a 3rd grader through a series of 5 activities.  Each activity is supposed to take around 45 minutes, so this guide alone should be enough to take our co-op to the summer.

I ordered some books about clouds and the water cycle to start us out, and I was excited to find one available by Jeanne Bendick, How to Make A Cloud. I got a couple of generic children's science books, but I found what look to be a couple of nice gems, too.
 



4 comments:

Christina said...

Thanks much for the suggestions, Kris. We are segueing into weather science now, too.

Subadra said...

Hi Kris,
What a fun study! I remember the fun we had when the kids were doing them...
Here are a few books I have listed on clouds in general..

Subadra
http://bookslinksandmore.blogspot.com/2009/07/crazy-about-clouds.html

Kris said...

Fabulous collection of resources, Subadra! Thanks for posting the link. We started today and it went very well, yet I needed some more resources. You have supplied me with an abundance! I'll have to pass the link on to the At Home Science Yahoo group.

Subadra said...

Hi Kris,
I am late responding here. I am so glad you found them useful. I hope your group members found it useful too. We are reliving our moments of the study through your blog. My ds got interested in nature through this study, and I would say this was instrumental in all the work he does with the naturalists these days:)
Have a ton of fun!
Subadra
http://bookslinksandmore.blogspot.com/