Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Scientist in Training






My oldest son has always been interested in science things - why and how things work, designing, patterns, etc.  We are frequently completing STEM projects and the like.  We have that area of science covered.  

One Kindergarten standard that we hadn't touched yet is to investigate weather patterns over time.  

We got our yearly calendar from the IBEW 481 local with pictures of people from our community.  

I bought weather stickers from United Arts and Education.  

Then each day, we placed stickers on the calendar that reflected the weather for that day.  Now, he's only 4 so we stuck with the basics - sun, cloud, rain, snow.  This could easily be extended to include high and low temperatures, wind speed, etc.  There were no cute stickers for those.  




Then January ended.  I reflected on the work we did.  He liked the daily stickers, but he didn't seem to get much out of it in terms of the overall goal - to understand weather patterns over time.  So, I wanted to do more with it than just see it on the calendar.  Can't stop there!  I'm a teacher.  It's in my blood.  

I typed up a bar graph template.  So, today, he used those same stickers to fill in the bar graph to look for patterns for the month of January.  




Right away he started noticing that there were more cloudy days than sunny, more snowy days than rainy.  Yes!  This is what I was looking for!  




And because I want this experience to be fun for him, and not a chore, I let his focus and interest dictate how far we got on the bar group.  17 days.  He did 17 days worth of data collection in one sitting.  That felt good enough for today.  We'll pick it back up tomorrow.... or not.  It will be there for him to choose when he's ready again! 




Until then, we'll keep tracking the data on our calendar.  My hope is that we'll complete a whole year of bar graphs so that we can compare the weather month to month in Indiana.

You can find the data collection sheets here for FREE!!

I'd love to know what ideas you have to further our weather exploration!!

Pam

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