What's the BIG Idea | Activity kit 9

MATH & SCIENCE LITERACY CONNECTIONS

book lists programs research standards resources BIG idea kits and more kits

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This kit is part of the What's The BIG Idea? series and contains:

- two thermometers

- one rain gauge

- instructional manual

- Who Likes the Rain? by Wong Herbert Yee

What do young children learn when they explore weather?

They learn to notice and describe weather characteristics.
They use tools to gather weather information.
They collect, discuss and record weather data.
They use their senses to test differences in our surroundings.

The goal of this What’s the BIG Idea? kit:

To provide a general, basic understanding of weather while reading books, making observations and doing hands-on investigations.

$32.99

We live in an ocean of air surrounding the earth called the atmosphere. Weather is what’s going on in the atmosphere.

The main features of weather are temperature, cloud cover, precipitation and wind. The sun heats the atmosphere, but not evenly, which causes different air temperatures and gets the air moving as wind. The sun also causes water to evaporate from the earth as water vapor creating clouds. Clouds accumulate, then the water condenses and creates precipitation. The water evaporates again, starting the water cycle all over again.

For young children, the process of evaporation will appear magical—the water disappears!

The earth revolves around the sun through a year creating the seasons. The seasons are a cycle of changing weather and related events that children can observe, record and learn to predict.

Some web resources to look at:

www.weatherwizkids.com

www.noaa.gov

www.nasa.gov

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0514746. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.