Teaching Weather When You Only Have Climate

Recently we have been focusing on weather at our house. Since out goal, in both science and history has been to start at the very beginning (insert music notes merrily across the top of the previous words), we began with the big bang. We then moved on to the sun and seasons, the differences in Northern and Southern hemispheres and, since we were in the neighborhood, a discussion of day and night.

Our school globe, a dark room and a flashlight turned out to be the perfect tools to show how the sun hits the earth at different times of the day and during different seasons. Kids can’t resist dark rooms and flashlights now, can they? By actually “tilting’ one of our crew, and having another one hold the flashlight, we were able to emphasize the impact that the earth’s tilt has on the seasons. This of course, elicited giggles from all assembled.

However, after this auspicious start, we’ve started to stumble. September through December should be one of the best times to teach weather, with the variety of it we see at that time of year…unless you live in Southern California. I like to say we have climate here but, no weather - a bit of an exaggeration perhaps but, then I grew up in a place were we had WEATHER, lots of it!




And, I’ve been rather surprised by the variety of things that are, umm abstract in this climate.

Let’s take clouds. There are basically three types, right? Well, we don’t tend to have many clouds here and we certainly have very few, cumulous, since we have such low humidity. Speaking of which…it’s a bit hard to describe humidity, when the children have never felt it. Let’s not even talk about the heat index. I made an attempt to explain this, how it “feels” hotter when it’s more humid. Guess we’ll have to wait for a trip to Florida. And then we have barometers and also thermometers, neither of which show a great variance over the course of a week or a month for that matter.

Since we live by the coast, this is of course exacerbated. We did learn though that it’s because water holds heat better than air our temperature stays more nearly the same day and night. Since they’ve all traveled one hour inland to the desert, this concept was not met with blank stares.

We’ve done the best that we can with the climate we have been dealt. We’ve put out slim glass jars to measure rain. Slim jars, since we get so little rain, we can record bigger numbers. We put up a thermometer and a wind vane. We’re tackling the weather, such as it is. We will however, have to come back to this throughout the years as we travel to different places...unless you all have any ideas?

Next up is earthquakes…now that’s something to which they can relate!


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Afterschooling Accoutrements- Teaching Prehistory with Safari Hats

Crystal, once again joyfully shared our afterschooling plan with a group of moms and met the usual blank stares. We’re not progressing much in that department . Where we are finding success is in our children’s interest in the subjects we are covering.

As little of our afterschooling adventures including sitting at a desk we’ve found following a set curriculum not quite our speed. Actually, that may not be true. We haven’t been following a home school curriculum perhaps because our after schooling goals are not so rigorous. Hmmm…in reality maybe it’s just I think I’m so smart I don’t have to follow a curriculum…something to take up with a therapist.

Whatever. The point is, we’ve been stumbling around a bit this session (August through December we are covering the 3 periods of prehistory prior to jumping into TWTM, Story of the World.) We’ve used a variety of books and a number of approaches and find we’re…all over the ancient (Pangaea) map. A quick planning meeting helped us reassess our expectations and our children’s abilities and interests.

First, we found we CAN cover the origins of the earth, how life appeared and the way things evolve. The kids will “Get It”. However, their main interest is in what ferocious, ugly and interesting species were living at the time and how they might find some of those wonderful things to take home and live in our backyards.


Given that, in the context of one of our major goals in tackling this whole afterschooling thing….putting their learning in context as opposed to learning history and science, out of order, and in bits and pieces …as it tends to be taught in school, we’ve had to regroup.

Rather than check out a variety of books on the topic we are studying, we’ve narrowed it down to buying the whole Barrons, Prehistoric World Series . Six books at less than $5.00 each, they cover each of the major periods in pre-history: Early Life, Triassic Life, Jurassic Life, Cretaceous Life, The Age of Mammals and the Ice Age. Each book features 10-12 different animals that lived in the time period and tells a little about their habitat, food and size. Each book also includes a timeline of the whole series, easy for the kids to follow and review at the start of each book.

On the kinesthetic learning front, though we’d love to seek out interesting crafts and experiments to complement our readings, since the kids’ major interest is finding fossils or hopefully a live prehistoric beast, we’ve instead geared them up for fossil hunting. Safari Hats, toothbrushes, paintbrushes, tweezers, shovels and nets have all found their place on plastic tools belts. Empty egg cartons act as specimen boxes and wooden hammers, a plastic syringe and the launcher for a spinning top all apparently also have a place…for what, I’m not exactly sure. They have all come into use though in the yards, empty lots and parks in which we dig and hunt.

This endless digging, a developmentally appropriate activity anyway, has led to some great discoveries, though no live beasts and keeps them interested in the topic and running back and forth to the PreHistoric World books to verify that, indeed they have found an Iguanodon bone. No reason to dissuade them.

It’s also led to actual drawing and writing on the 3 foot timeline taped up on our playroom wall. It’s been there for two months with nary a glance despite Crystals’ excellent artwork and carefully labeled time periods. Maybe we’re getting the hang of this afterschooling thing after all.

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