Want to explore the topic of weather in your homeschool science? Here’s a complete textbook-free resource guide for your homeschool learners! All ages are sure to enjoy this homeschool science weather study!
Our family keeps science pretty simple in the elementary years. We follow interests (in this case, my daughter’s curiosity about the weather). We read lots of good books. We explore simple hands-on activities and nature walks. We watch some videos. We incorporate nature journaling into our normal reading journal routine. Mostly, we just have fun!
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Here are some fabulous resources you can use to customize a textbook-free weather curriculum in your homeschool:
Weather Book List:
Nature Study Guides:
We really enjoyed our first experience with the NaturExplorers guides. It was these guides, for example, which taught us how us to create a homemade barometer. We also loved the printable rainy day nature walk scavenger hunt! Try Captivating Clouds, Remarkable Rain, or Snow and Ice to accompany your own weather studies!
Include books from nonfiction, fiction, and poetry genres for a well-rounded approach to the study of weather.
Seasons:
- Today and Today, haiku by Issa and illustrated by G. Brian Karas
Beautiful illustrations accompany poems by one of the great masters of traditional Japanese haiku - A Child’s Calendar, poems by John Updike and illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman
Clouds:
Water Cycle:
Rain:
- Down Comes the Rain, Franklyn M. Branley
- Rain, Robert Kalan
- It’s Raining, Gail Gibbons
- Come On, Rain, Karen Hesse
Snow:
Severe Weather:
- The Tornado Scientist: Seeing Inside Severe Storms, Mary Kay Carson
- When the Sky Breaks: Hurricanes, Tornadoes, and the Worst Weather in the World, Simon Winchester
General Weather Books:
- Can Lightning Strike the Same Place Twice? And other questions about earth, weather, and the environment, Joanne Mattern
- Stickmen’s Guide to Earth’s Atmosphere in Layers, Catherine Chambers
- What Makes a Tornado Twist? And other questions about weather, Mary Kay Carson
- Weather- Whipping Up a Storm!, Dan Green
- You Wouldn’t Want to Live Without Extreme Weather!, Roger Canavan
- Look at the Weather, Britta Teckentrup (absolutely gorgeous painted illustrations!
- Inside Weather, Mary Kay Carson
Homeschool Science: Hands-On Weather Projects and Activities
- Make clouds out of cotton balls: a simple craft activity that reinforces cloud classification
- Create your own weather tracking charts (and now you can check off math, too!)
- Temperature line graph
- Rainfall bar graph
- Daily weather sticker calendar for younger children
- Write a weather-themed haiku
- Demonstrate the water cycle in a baggie
- Take a sealable baggie and draw/label 3 arrows representing the water cycle (condensation, precipitation, evaporation)
- Fill with ¼ cup of water. Seal the top. Tape to a sunny window.
- Observe
- Homemade barometer
Homeschool Science: Weather Poems to include during Morning Time, use as memory work, or just enjoy any time!
I’ve curated 11 poems you can enjoy alongside your science studies! Print them out and recite them together, or read them aloud to your children while you’re drawing pictures of your favorite types of weather.
An additional fabulous poem you may also enjoy is unfortunately not in the public domain, so I can’t reproduce it in my memory work pack. Be sure to check out “Weather” by Eve Merriam!
Homeschool Science: Weather Related Field Trips
- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has many regional fieldtrip opportunities such as visits to a local branch of the National Weather Service
- You can also check with your local television station to see if they offer field trips with their meteorologist.
- Even if you can’t make it in real life, you can watch this Virtual Weather Station fieldtrip.
Homeschool Science: YouTube Videos all about the Weather
You can click on the individual links below, or head to my YouTube channel where I’ve rounded them all up into 1 playlist.
- Boston Blizzard Snowlapse
- How a thunderstorm is formed
- How did clouds get their names?
- How do hurricanes form?
- How do tornadoes form?
- How lightning forms
- Predicting weather
- Severe Weather
- The most lightning struck place on earth
- Weather Channels
- What causes tornadoes?
- What is weather?
- And just for fun, here’s a silly Studio C comedy sketch about “weather prediction”
Other episodes to stream:
- Magic School Bus
- Wild Weather
- Peep Season 2 Episode 2
- DIY Sci Season 1, Episode 9
- Sid the Science Kid Season 12, Episode 15
Further Meteorological Exploration:
- Why is Wind Chill So Dangerous?
- Freezing Rain, Sleet, Snow… and Graupel?
- How to Predict the Temperature using Only Crickets
- NASA/NOAA Cloud Chart
Fun Meteorological Tools and Toys
SmartLab Toys You-Track-It Weather Lab
What’s your favorite kind of weather?
SO much fantastic information all in one spot!! Thank you!
Thanks! I was just glad your site taught me about graupel. 🙂 I had never seen anything like that before!