Our Bluey has become highly interested in the weather lately. Most days he wakes up and immediately asks us to check the local forecast on the computer.
In keeping with our homeschooling philosophy of teaching him what he wants to know when he wants to know it, we have been enmeshed in weather lore lately.
Our favorite information resources include weather.com, wunderground.com, or one of our local TV stations like WKOW. Frequently, we check more than one site, allowing us a chance to model good research habits. Every website does not offer the same information, nor do they all present it in the same manner.
Our visits to the weather sites offer a chance to study maps. Expanding the maps, we can see that Iowa and the Dakotas are west of our home- the weather they are having now might be our weather tomorrow. Michigan is to our east. The storm that came through yesterday is in Michigan now, or moving into Ontario. We can even research what weather our relatives are experiencing where they live.
We’ve also been reading some weather books. It’s a great boost of our science knowledge as we learn about condensation, layers of the atmosphere, and how those cool vapor trails form (from jets in the stratosphere- 30 miles up.) We did a fun experiment with a flashlight to illustrate why even though the sun shines in most places during the winter, its heat is so diffused that things don’t warm up very much.
Now Bluey has decided to build his own weather station. It will take a while to finish, but it is underway. We started with a rain gauge- which seemed very important the day after a bunch of thunderstorms rolled through.
Where else could Bluey’s weather interests take him? Art? Map making? Reading the Wizard of Oz? The sky’s the limit. Help your kiddoes follow their bliss and learn what they want to learn!