Homeschooling Kindergarten: Teaching About the Weather

Like the solar system, the weather was one other subject I decided to introduce to my son to last year. All others (besides reading and math) were child-initiated. For this, I mostly relied on books from the library and our own book collection (see below for list of books). For our initial lesson, I stuck to an easy topic: the water cycle.

I don’t do this often, but I printed out some coloring pages for the boys about the water cycle at Kid Zone Science (scroll to bottom of page for links to worksheets). If I use worksheets and coloring pages sparingly, the boys seem to like it. (In general, they have not liked coloring books or drawing with crayons very much, but it does happen occasionally.)
After explaining the water cycle to my then five-year-old, we boiled some water on the stove and watched the steam rise: water vapor! Then I took a glass of ice water and held it over the steam until it started to condense: rain!
We also made a weather chart, and we kept track of the weather for one week. My son wanted to make another chart and keep going.

{Unfortunately, that never happened, and as we were studying clouds, I began to take pictures of cloud formations and had the idea to make a chart about that. Again, this didn’t happen. Maybe it will someday, or maybe it won’t. That’s okay. Now I’ll leave it up to my son to continue his study of the weather.}

Again, at the time, my son began to get interested in the weather, specifically about hurricanes and tornadoes. He checked out several books on these topics at the library and wanted me to read them to him. I also let him watch some footage about hurricanes on YouTube, and now he definitely doesn’t want to be in one! (You’ll have to decide what is age-appropriate viewing for your child. My son seems to look at natural phenomena with a scientific mind, and they don’t scare him as much as it would have scared me as a child.)
We also watched a cool YouTube video about weather balloons (“High Altitude Weather Balloon Launch”), and my son wanted to make a pretend one.
After his pre-K graduation last spring, my mother-in-law wanted to get him a gift for a congratulatory present. He asked for a weather station! It was on our back deck rail for quite a while until our new dog chewed it to bits. 😦 My son liked checking the temperature and rain level everyday, so I may get him a better thermometer and rain gauge at some point.
We also had a bonus when we visited the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago this past summer. My son picked “Tornado Alley” to watch in their Omnimax theatre.
And, of course, we’ve had our lessons reinforced in classes at the Sandy Creek Nature Center in Athens, Georgia.

As you can see, all of my lessons are pretty easy. I don’t rely on a curriculum. I pick topics I think I should cover (that he would like) from a typical course of study for his age range. I use library books, YouTube, worksheets if they seem to help, and then I let serendipity take its course.

Having a brief lesson at home has helped my son understand and process these topics when we’ve found other ways to learn about them: in his classes, at the museum, on T.V. or new books that might otherwise not have gained his attention.

Teaching this way has not been a stress on me, and so far, I haven’t lost my child’s interest in learning, which is most important to me!

Here’s a list of books my son has enjoyed listening to me read:

Hurricanes, Simon, Seymour
Hurricanes! Gibbons, Gail
Tornadoes, Simon, Seymour
Scholastic’s The magic school bus wet all over : a book about the water cycle, Relf, Patricia
Weather words and what they mean, Gibbons, Gail
I Can Read About: Weather, Supraner, Robyn
How does the sun make weather? Williams, Judith (Judith A.)
Thunderstorms, Sipiera, Paul P.
Lightning, Herriges, Ann
Down comes the rain, Branley, Franklyn Mansfield
The Magic School Bus: At the Waterworks, Cole, Joanna
Clouds, Rockwell, Anne
All the colors of the rainbow, Fowler, Allan