Weather Fun!

Weather has been one of my favorite units so far this year (and one of the kiddos’ favorite themes too)!! There is so much that you can do to teach about weather. Get ready for photo-overload because I took a TON of pictures of our activities this week!

It was a pretty rainy week here in South Florida. While I’m not a huge fan of rainy day dismissals at school, I did love how I could use the rain as a teaching tool! We did a fun rain cloud in a jar science experiment.

Here’s the materials you need to do the experiment:

Jar filled with water, about 3/4 full
Shaving cream
Black food coloring
Blue Food Coloring
Spoon to stir
Extra Cups
Dropper

Here’s our jar of water, filled about 3/4 of the way to the top.

In a cup, put some shaving cream and mix it with black food coloring to make gray. Then put the “clouds” on top or your water jar. We discussed that rain doesn’t usually fall from white clouds. When it is going to rain, we usually seen gray storm clouds, so of course we needed gray shaving cream clouds for our experiment!

Next, use another empty cup to put food blue coloring with water.

It’s up to you how much you want to put in the cup. Then, fill your dropper with the blue mixture.

Now for the fun part! Place the dropper into your cloud and squeeze! My kiddos loved squeezing and making rain! **It’s a great fine motor activity too!! 🙂

Just like a real cloud, it takes a few squeezes of “rain” for the cloud to fill up and “rain” down into the jar. It’s super exciting when it finally rains! The stream of blue going down into the jar is amazing!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Weather-Learning-Pack-1726285

When we were done with our experiment, I had my students draw and write what happened. This page is part of my Weather Pack.

We tracked the weather together for the week. I laminated the poster and used colorful dry-erase markers to fill in the weather each day. That way it’s reusable!

Then my students each recorded the weather into their Weather Book.

Each day they drew a picture of what the weather was like outside and we wrote it together.

I LOVE their drawings!!

We also made the cutest little cloud craft ever…a Pet Cloud! It’s super simple and adorable!

Here’s what you need:

Cotton Balls
Google Eyes
Clear Bags
Pet Cloud Bag Topper (included in my Weather Pack)

Have your students gently stretch out the cotton balls and clump them together to make a cloud shape. Then they clue two google eyes in the middle. Place it in the bag, attach the pet cloud bag topper, and VOILA!