First Day of Sam's Weather Study

Long story short, the planetarium was closed-again, due to "sickness" on Superbowl Sunday, so we all know what that means. Even thought it won't be open to the public again until the beginning of March, we decided to take her then, and move on to weather for now.

I have been busily preparing for it, making a list of experiments and activities so that we can look over the list and pick whatever strikes us as interesting at the time. Most of the stuff we need is either stuff around the house or cheap to go pick up last minute.

I reserved several weather books online and picked a few off the shelves at the library last Wednesday. We have been flipping through those. And then yesterday we went to a used book store and Sam got to pick several books that she can keep around the house permanently. (We are slowly building our home library. Just have to find a place for it! I need another closet!)

Today was our first day really diving into weather. I let Sam pick out a weather journal and we wrote in it. She wrote the date by herself, the temperature, what the weather was like outside-she wrote and drew a picture, and then what kind of clouds there were in the sky, because we have touched a little on cloud types while flipping through her new books. It was raining today, so we sat and watched the rain. (Watching and listening will teach you more than you could ever learn just talking about it.) We sat there forever and we discussed how, when the rain fell harder and faster, it was louder. We talked about the sounds we heard, the wind, and the birds, the rain. We wrote down all our observations. Then we came inside and looked online at what the weather channel says, vs. what we saw outside and what the thermometer said.

It was a great experience. I can't wait to get more into our lessons and see what else we can learn. I am sure she will learn a lot from this unit and so will I!