This science unit study about weather was quick, simple, and easy to put together! We did multiple activities that took no time at all, and we continue to talk about the topics we learned throughout our daily discussions even after we finished.
I actually planned this unit very easily and I lay out the whole planning process in my YouTube video here. Be sure to check it out because it goes through a lot of my philosophies on simple planning!
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Unit Study Components
This unit study consisted of a daily devotion, library books, food, and hands on activities. I had a big, fun wish list for this one, but I didn’t get to check everything off. I think it’s important to let it go though and not stress about the checklists. I want my kids to be interested in what we are doing and I’m always going to make decisions based on what’s best for us.
In this post I’ll share all that we did, but I’ll also link you to the other simple activities I wished to do with my family. That’s not to say we’ll never do them, but we just didn’t get to it in our time span for the unit. I’ll save them for a rainy day!
Daily Devotion
This year we are reading from Louie Giglio’s “How Great is Our God”. We really enjoy these devotionals because they’re easy to read, fun to look at, and it has that learn-something-knew-every-day kind of feeling.
I love simplicity, but I did have to dig around for the right pages for this one. It wasn’t too hard. Using the index, I found all the weather-related devotions and wrote them down for me to follow each morning as I read them. (You can see how I did this in my planning video) I also added just a couple devotions from the “Indescribable” book in order to have 10 total devotions (for 10 school days)
The following is what I came up with from “How Great is Our God”:
- Water Cycle p.62
- Rain p. 56 and p. 146
- Clouds p. 182
- Storms p. 12
- Thunder p. 176
- Hurricanes p. 88
- Seasons p. 42
The last two devotions are from “Indescribable”:
- Rain p. 188
- Lightning p.168
Library Books
I like to read at least one library book a day during our science units. When I pick library books I like to make sure they’re the kind of books that are read aloud friendly. If you have a routine of putting books on hold, you can do this. I usually just show up to the library and start quickly skimming through books in the non-fiction section to fill up my bag.
For a simple, stress free unit study, I do not think it is necessary to have a specific list of books. Whenever I have to follow a book list, it stresses me out. Can I find them at the library? Should I buy them? Can I afford to buy them?
Try to stay relaxed about your book selection. Whatever you read is going to be WONDERFUL. You’ll have great discussions with your kids and you’ll learn so much.
If you prefer to look for specific books, I will list the ones we really enjoyed from our selection:
- Hurricane Watch (Read and Find Out Science Series) This series is really great and they have even more weather books than this one!
- Weather Words by Gail Gibbons
- Weather Ready-to-Reads
- Nat Geo Kids First Big Book of Weather
Food
I love to find snacks or meals that fit our theme when I can. To me, it’s an easy way to learn about a topic. We use multiple senses to experience something and its easy to plan into our day. We are already eating every day – now we are just changing the recipe!
Cloud Jello
I found this activity from the Totschool website. It was a great fit for our unit, and I knew my kids would love it. Unfortunately, it flopped for us! The directions are to use the quick set method for the jello. I don’t know what I did wrong, but my jello did not set at all!
I will say, they still look pretty! If I were to do it again, I’d probably keep it even simpler. Make the jello following the regular recipe the night before. Add the cloud topping (whipped cream) to the top when you’re ready to eat it.
It will look like the ones I have pictured. Although you can’t really tell….that blue stuff is liquid! oops! I’d definitely try it again. This one has some fun potential.
Check out the activities we didn’t get to for some more food ideas I thought would be simple and fun for studying weather!
Hands-On Activities
I usually try to make a wish list of activities I want to do with the kids. I have a mindset of if I get to them, awesome! If not, it’s ok! I personally feel like our reading and discussions is enough. However, these activities really do bring us joy, so I do try to fit them into our schedule when I can.
Now, this unit I approached a little differently (by accident) and it worked out so well, I may continue the pattern. We had a really odd week, and I had no extra time for the hands on things I typically enjoy. So, that Friday, I skipped the workbooks and we had a full science afternoon! It was so nice because we did one activity after another and it took all the pressure off of fitting it in during our regular school days.
Weather Wheel
This idea came from one of our library books! It was the perfect simple “craft” to kick off our unit. I used a marker to divide a paper plate into five sections. Then, we talked about the different kinds of weather we might see at our house.
I let my big girls draw their own pictures and write the type of weather. We used “rainy, sunny, partly cloudy, thunderstorm, cloudy”. (It was summer time, so there was really no reason to put something like snow.)
For the next few days I never really had to do anything with them. They were in a very visible location right by the window. As the girls passed by one, they’d change it all on their own. I love that observing the weather became so natural to them.
Cotton Ball Clouds
Almost all of our weather books talked about the different kinds of clouds and what they looked like. This made it easy for us to start recognizing clouds anytime we were outside or in the car.
For an easy way to review this, we used cotton balls to make the shapes of the clouds. I kept it simple by sticking to three: cumulus, stratus, and cirrus
Water Cycle in a Bag
This is so simple to set up, and you leave it out for observation during your unit. I found the idea from Pinterest here. The supplies are simple – water and a ziplock bag. A marker and blue food coloring are optional to add a cute factor.
We put ours in a window right by our kitchen table. After a day or two we could see the drops of water starting to drip down the sides – the water cycle in action!
Cloud in a Jar
You can find the directions to this one here. The supplies you need are a jar (with a lid), ice, hot water, and hairspray. I love these types of science demonstrations because all the supplies are already at my house.
We did this one about 14 times! I’m serious! It was so neat to see. I read multiple blogs sharing this activity, but one suggested to actually lift the lid off the jar to “release” the cloud. I highly recommend doing that because it really makes the cloud stand out!
As it formed slowly in the jar, we really had to watch carefully to notice the cloud, but once we lifted the lid it was very obvious what had formed inside.
Rain in a Jar
Another easy set of instructions and short supply list for this one. You need a jar, shaving cream, food coloring, water, and a dropper. I also suggest some sort of tray or plate to put the jar on. We got a little crazy with how big our cloud was and the food coloring started to drip down the sides of the jar onto the table.
Fill your jar with water and spray the shaving cream on the top as your cloud. The water represents air. I suggest mixing a little bit of water with food coloring (maybe just a spoonful of water! not much). The reason is because it took a LOT of drops of food coloring to make it through our cloud. Watering it down gave us better results.
The food coloring mixture represents the drops of rain forming in the clouds. As they get heavier and heavier, the drops fall as rain.
This is another easy one to do again and again as long as you don’t mind losing so much of your food coloring.
“Wish list” Items We Didn’t Get to
I highly recommend making this adorable cloud shaped sandwich! You could definitely just cut out a shape from your regular sandwich bread, but this recipe calls for a braided challah loaf that already takes the shape when cut! I love it!
Check out these simple snacks to serve throughout your week.
Have you ever heard of tornado cake? I’ve never heard of it, and it has absolutely nothing to do with weather! (ha!) However, with a name like tornado you can’t go wrong! Apparently it was named that because you can throw it together quickly for unexpected guests! The recipe looks delicious! I really want to try it, but ultimately my picky eaters aren’t fans of coconut. I did share the recipe with my husband, and he’s asking to try it soon!
Can you tell I love food activities? Well, the last thing I wanted to share is a non-food related demonstration. This thunderstorm formation experiment has a short supply list and a neat outcome!
You can also follow me on Pinterest. I have all of our activities plus the ones we didn’t get to saved to a “weather” board.
Watching the Forecast
I don’t know if you’d qualify this as an “activity”, but one simple thing we did was watch the weather forecast! We spent a few minutes the first day pausing and discussing all the different facts presented to us. We really enjoyed it and our local news had an app we could download onto our tv so that we could see it at any time of the day.
We didn’t do this every day, but a few times throughout our unit we paused to watch and learn from our local forecast.
Future Unit Studies
Is this information helpful? Let me know in the comments or connect with me on my YouTube channel or Instagram to let me know. I really hope to do this in order to give families ideas on how to throw together a unit study that’s fun and simple and low-stress.
As I mentioned before, we plan to loop our science and history, but I love sharing them here with you when we finish.
Be sure to check out one of our history units as well.
Are you a fan of novel units?
If you’re a fan of adding some fun to your read alouds in a simple way, I want to encourage you to see the different Read Aloud Experiences I have created. Almost all of them are absolutely FREE! These are created on a chapter-by-chapter basis and create such a unique, hands-on read aloud unit to do together with your family!
I also have a few different blog posts I’ve published sharing how we celebrate the books we read by experiencing the story through different activities.
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